


Crossroads

by meanoldauthor



Series: Mean Old Lady [19]
Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Canon-Typical Violence, Domestic Disputes, Origin Story, chapters needing content warnings will be tagged, honestly if you read any other adal stories you know how this ends, longfic, parenting is hard, up until it isn't
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-02
Updated: 2017-11-14
Packaged: 2019-01-07 23:11:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 11
Words: 29,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12242481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meanoldauthor/pseuds/meanoldauthor
Summary: Couriers walk hard roads--but those roads have to start somewhere. Long before the Mojave, long before Courier Six, there were the Walker.And this is how they died.





	1. Chapter 1

“What’s wrong with geckos?”

Ches fidgeted, turning his knife over in his hands. His mouth twisted, muttering something about a “little dumb blue gecko.”

Lying prone in the grass next to him, Adal put her chin on her hand. “Sun’s shining, weather’s fine. I can wait all day, kiddo.”

He frowned, looking very like her. His hair curled where hers was straight, maybe, and he freckled rather than tanned, but that little scowl was the mirror image of his ma. “I know little kids who could could skin geckos,” he said, with every ounce of gravitas he could muster.

“Hold on, now.” Adal tugged at the leather of her hood. “Calling your old lady a sissy?”

Mumble mumble “mebbe not fire geckos” mumble mumble.

“That’s right, you’re not.” She parted the grass with a hand. The geckos in the meadow below were still milling about, unaware of them. “No shame in it. They’re plentiful, we hunt ‘em all the time. Half the hunters in our band are wearing gecko hoods.”

“I want a night stalker.”

“Hey now,” she said, raising her eyebrows. “You better be able to back that one up, brave hunter. I’m not letting any son of mine go hunting night stalkers with a knife.” He avoided her eyes. “You’re young, kiddo. You have another couple years, maybe, before you’re expected to do your trial. I was that old, anyway. Don’t set your heart. We might not even be in night stalker territory then.”

Ches stared down at the knife, the handle made of a black, hooked antler, just like hers. She remembered leaving him in the deers’ territory a year gone, returning to camp to wait for him to either prove himself a hunter or a disgrace. Three agonizing days ended with him returning, triumphant, and her near bursting with pride that her boy, her shadow, her little Ches was going to be as much a hunter as she.

She reached out to tuck a lick of hair behind his ear. “What’s bothering you, dearling?”

He scowled and pulled his scarf down to his eyebrows, a plain child’s cloth, hiding his hair. “They say I’m not really Walker because I’m a by-blow.”

“Wha— _who_ says?” The geckos below jerked to attention.

“The other kids,” he said, peeling apart a bit of grass to not look at her. “Alam. ‘Cause my dad’s just some Circle Junction trader you don’t even know the name of and not a Walker man.”

“Oh, I’ll whip your brother’s feet,” she said, scowling. “No shame in it, Ches.”

“Say m’soft,” he mumbled. “Can’t keep up.”

“Only because you mope about it and drag along,” she said. “We’re small, us Walker, but that means a half-blood’s still miles ahead of any townie. Bit too small. You start marrying cousins if you don’t get new blood in sometimes, and you heard the tales about the people in Box Canyon.”

“Those are just scary stories,” he said.

“Oh, that they aren’t, kid. I saw a man with his eyes where his ears ought to be,” she said, voice hushed.

“Don’t be silly, ma.”

“Arm growing out of his nose…” She touched the back of her wrist to her face and wriggled her fingers.

Ches snorted, then tried to frown. “I mean it, ma,” he said. “I gotta prove I can.”

“You’re set on this?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, solemn.

“I teach you how, you’ll listen and heed me, no matter what I say?”

“Yup.”

“Even if it’s no?”

He pulled a face. “Sure.”

Adal smiled. She reached out to tousle his hair. “We’ll bag you a night stalker.”

He sat up, eyes going bright. “Really?”

“Really truly,” she said, nodding. “We’re walking to Crossroads, kiddo. I might die of pride to see you lined up with the other new hunters, young as you are and in a skin like that. I can teach you tricks to sneak up on them.” She pointed down into the meadow. “ _But_ we start with geckos. You can walk in the middle of a pack and not upset them, it’s near the same trick you use on night stalkers. Learn to cut one out, isolate it. You kill one where the others see, the rest want your blood, and you ain’t walking out alive. Hear me, my boy?”

He nodded like his head was on springs. She smiled. “It’s all in the eyes. Animals don’t like being stared at, right…”

***

“…so _then_ , when he’s doubled over from the gut punch, you can grab him by the ears and bash his face on your knee,” Adal said, demonstrating as she walked.

Ches nodded, fascinated. “Han says you could kill someone, if you did that hard enough.”

“Well, I busted plenty of noses, kiddo, and haven’t managed to yet,” she said, hiking the gecko carcass higher on her shoulders. “Takes the fight right out of ‘em, though.”

The day was ending as they picked up the trail back to camp. Trails wound between the hills and mesas, some narrow enough that Ches had to follow behind as they went. “Ma?”

“Yeah?”

“What was he like?”

He couldn’t see her face, see her bow her head. “Tall,” she managed. “Fair. One of their warriors, made the bows that they defended the town with.” She resettled the gecko. “I didn’t…”

“You didn’t know him long.”

The defeat in his voice was like a knife, and cut through any response she tried to form.

The massive bluffs gave way to low meadows between, and lazily winding rivers. Everything was deep in shadow as they neared the lush area the Walker had claimed, the only light coming from modest fires. In the center of the camp, the adults had gathered, and Adal could hear raised voices between them. She dropped the carcass at the edge of the greens and waved a hand at her son. “Go find your brother and get started on this.”

Adal pushed into the crowd, trying to hear. They made room, cousins and further relations. Most shared the same dark, hooded eyes and near-black hair, skin tan and weathered. She found Jeth midway through the pack and took his hand, twisting her fingers through his. “What’s happened?”

He pulled his hand away, expression grim. “Peda and Sen found more of the Red-flag men near the roads. They killed some of them.”

“We’ve _seen_ what they do!” Adal stood on her toes. Peda, their senior hunter, stood in the center of the ring. A younger man, Sen, held a strange rifle, the stock blank, missing the carving and paintings of a Walker weapon. Both wore scarred hunter’s hides, a mirror of Adal’s own. “Bodies tied up to rot! People stolen from their homes!” She gestured at the people around her, voice hoarse from yelling. “We can’t kill them all, no, but we can make their march painful as we can.”

“It’s not our fight!” one of the men shouted, his hood the salvaged cloth of a forager. “And it’s not our way. We’re Walker. We don’t have our feet nailed down like the townies, we can move on when things get dark. It’s served us long enough.”

“So we abandon the whole region?” Sen said, a little shrill with so many eyes on him. He clutched the foreign rifle tighter. “Walker move on when we can’t hold, but that doesn’t mean we don’t fight to keep what’s ours.”

“What happens if we leave?” Adal shouted, pushing her way into the center. Jeth tugged at her hood, trying to stop her. “Huh? These aren’t raids. These bastards don’t take what they need and go back to ground. The towns they take, they mean to keep. They break the people there. We leave, what the hell are we going to come back to?”

“So we find new land!”

“It might not be our problem, but other bands?” Peda said, giving Adal an approving nod. “Our children, when they Walk? What will they find? World’s gotten smaller. Land’s getting carved up. We’re running out of places to go _to._ ”

She looked around at the group. The rest of the Walker shifted where they stood, uncertain. Adal ground her teeth. “We have to fight. We show them the world isn’t theirs to take, make them hurt, maybe drive them off. But we can’t just let them trample us down.”

“No.”

The voice was old and papery, but there was steel in it yet. The crowd sidled away from a short, bent figure, leaning on a heavy cudgel like a cane. His clothes were finer than the Walker who made a path for him, a mix of salvage and hide and handmade mender’s cloth. He was old, maybe, but not frail, pared down to bone and sinew and muscle.

Their Elder looked out over the group. “When our ancestors started their Long Walk, they sought shelter from those in a Vault. They were refused. What did our ancestors do?” he asked.

Adal shared a grudging look with the other hunters. “They walked on,” Peda said.

“When the raiders came to our forebears’ camp in Black Hills, killed many and left more injured and starving, what did they do?”

She joined in the next, grudgingly. “They walked on.”

“And when the droughts came, leaving the Walker to suffer, lose whole bands in the dust?”

The rest of the gathering spoke as one, _We walked on._ They were looking to each other, nodding. They walked on. So it had always been, when things got hard. There was always somewhere better, safer over the horizon, for those willing to Walk.

Adal sighed through her nose, frowning. “Santi, this isn’t the same,” she said. “These men aren’t one city or town or tribe. We’ve been seeing them for weeks, as we go. They came after _us_ , back in Mesa Verde, left the townies alone. I don’t think we can just outrun this one.”

The elder shook his head. “We have endured this way for long enough, outlasted weather and warlords, hard road and armies greater than these.” He looked them over again, the other Walker dropping their eyes. “We will continue to.”

The group relaxed, let out a collective breath. Taking this as the final word, they began to go back to their tasks. “And when we’re the only band to make it back to Crossroads? What then, Santi?” He turned back to her, face set hard. She planted her feet. “We just gonna _walk on_ then, too?”

He tightened his grip on the cudgel, and the nearby Walker froze. “Adal, daughter of Jia and Ouray. You are a trusted hunter, so I will give you the courtesy of a warning, but you are no Elder. You have not seen what I have, learned the lessons I have. It will not come to that.” He turned, thumping the cudgel harder than necessary with each step.

Adal shared a frustrated look with Peda and Sen before stomping back the way she had come. Jeth caught her arm, whispering to her, “You have to stop doing things like this.”

“What? Trying to keep us from killing ourselves?” she said, shaking him off.

“Arguing with everyone, _especially_ people who know better!” He followed her to where she had left the gecko carcass. “I know you shoot at them! What happens if they follow you back? The boys—”

She shot him a thin-lipped look, nodding at them toiling over the gecko. “Whatever your problem is this time, they don’t need to hear it.”

“Then don’t—” He sighed as she walked away. “You could listen for _once!_ ”

She didn’t look back, scooping Alam up under an arm, drawing a yell that dissolved into laughter. Ches’ gaze went between the two of them, and she ruffled his hair. “How’s the gecko? Ah, look at how far you’ve gotten, good job!”

Adal heard Jeth sigh and swear under his breath before finding somewhere else to be. Ches was quiet as they worked, so she filled the silence, talking them through the task and giving Alam the hide to scrape. “Don’t fret about him,” she said, nudging Ches’ arm. “He’ll cool off by tomorrow.”

He was frowning, but forced it at least back to neutral as she showed him how to set his knife to pare meat from bone.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for mild gore

They struck camp the next morning. No songs were sung as they worked, voices hushed when any of them found reason to speak. Ches helped her pack up the gecko meat, left to smoke overnight. Jeth and the other menders were clustered around the pack brahmin, distributing salvage between themselves. Adal tried to break the silence, talking about nothing much as they wrapped up the jerky and broke down the stands holding it. “We’d have to camp a little longer than usual, there’s more work in it than just drying the meat. Lasts longer’n regular jerky though, makes it worth it. We’d need to work with the foragers, too, see what they’ve found for fruits. Probably have to take a bighorner or some other big hoofer, they’ve got the best fat for pemic, around the kidneys…”

Ches worked alongside her, tying the bundles of jerky as she handed them over. “Ma?”

“…get it rendered and break the meat to dust…” She popped a thicker piece into her mouth, not dry enough to store. “What’s up, kiddo?”

He fussed with one of the ties on a roll, eyes down. “I heard Jeth talking with Bern last night. Santi might shun all the hunters that go after the strangers. The ones with the bull flags.”

Adal tucked another strip into the pouch she held. “Well. That would be something.”

“Is it good? That we’re fighting with them?” He tied off the roll, took the next from her. “We’ve never shunned people before…”

“They attacked us first.”

“A lot of people shoot at us,” he said, poking a finger through a hole In the cloth. “But then I mean, our elder goes and talks to them and we can trade, after…”

“These men aren’t like that.” She handed the last piece on the tripod to him. “Don’t fret it. We’re in the right.”

Ches stared at it, dropped it into a pouch at his waist. “How do we know?”

“They’re evil,” she said shortly. “I haven’t taken you to the towns they’ve claimed, and I won’t make you. They’re the kind of people that kill wasteful, hurt people for fun. Taking them down is a damn service to the world.” He ducked his head at her tone, and she frowned, reached down to tuck a loose lock of hair back under his scarf. “We might fight off the usual kinds of raiders, or leave their territory, but these people are…different. They’re invaders, not tribe.”

He scruffed his hair back in place, gathered up all the bundles. “I’ll get these handed out.”

Adal sighed and watched him go, burying the last of the embers.

The hunters clustered together as they walked, keeping time with the rest of the band’s singing, voices lower between themselves. Peda was in the center of the group. Her wife, Fen, carved a piece of wood as she walked, forager’s hood patterned in old faded roses. “I can’t ask any of you to come with,” Peda said, adjusting the baby at her breast. “If Santi calls it, we’ll get no support from anyone. You’ve all got siblings, spouses that’re menders and foragers, and I won’t ask you to put a rift there. All I’ll say is that the only way to get through to him is solidarity.”

She looked to all of them, to Sen, marking the blank stock of his rifle, to Adal, nodding grimly. Fen brushed a shaving off of her project. “I don’t think that’s a problem, dear.”

The band slowed as they came to a clearing, the sky gone to dusk. Santi called an order at their head, and packs were dropped, a few people sitting to stretch. Foragers untied bundles of sticks gathered throughout the day, kneeling with fire bundles or strikers. The children’s yelling pitched up as they darted between the adults, wrapping up one last round of muckle-the-mutant.

Adal checked over her rifle, rummaged in her ammo pouch to count. A silent arm’s length away, as he had been most of the day, Jeth looked at a point over her shoulder. “Bit late to go hunting.”

Adal didn’t look at him. Peda was tickling baby Ayla as she passed her to Fen, squeaking laughter. The rest of the hunters were converging on her, a few older ones with rifles, the rest with spears. “You know how it is,” she said, slinging her gun again. “Lot of quarry gets active this time of night.”

There was one final shout from the kids as they dogpiled one another. One at the bottom squirmed loose, and Ches held a rag-ball over his head, crowing victory. He stuffed it into his pack as he jogged towards his mother, panting. “I get to be the mutant again tomorrow!”

“You’re the mutant an awful lot,” she said, untying his spear from the side of her pack.

“Because I win an awful lot!” he said, taking it. His scarf had fallen low, and he reached up as she fussed with it. “Ma, don’t—”

“You’ve got a black eye!” she said, scowling. “Who did it?”

“I dunno,” he muttered, touching it. “Playn’ muckle.”

“You shouldn’t be playing games,” Jeth said, sitting cross-legged, digging in his pack. “You’re big enough to hurt the other kids.”

“Han is older…” Ches started, trailed off to pick at the grip on his spear.

“But you’re bigger,” Jeth said. “And your _mother_ is carrying your things so you can fool arou—”

“Leave him be.” Adal stepped between them. “He’s still a boy, let him play.”

Jeth scowled into his pack. Alam plopped down beside him, still out of breath. “And I’m still the closest thing he has to a father, so—”

“Don’t you start this,” Adal said, bristling. She saw the boys share a look, and she grabbed the straps of her pack, white-knuckled. “If you really were, you wouldn’t be picking on him.”

“I’m only—”

“I’m going hunting.”

“Let me finish a damn sentence!”

She kept walking, heard Ches lagging behind. The other hunters made room for them, but didn’t look at her as Peda spoke.

“…don’t know what we’ll find up there. There was a tribe that lived out of the complex, but we haven’t seen them yet. No saying if they’ve beat us there, what state it’s in, or if the locals are just laying low.” She pointed to one of their riflemen. “Eng, Harris, I want you both out front to scout. Adal, Sen, Ches, I want you to hook north, come down on the buildings. Voss, you’re with me, we’ll come in from the road. Rest of you keep watch, we don’t know who’s out here…”

“You want me to come?” Ches whispered as they broke up.

“Up to you,” she said, following the group as they headed down the road. A few broke off, keeping watch over the camp. “We won’t turn down the help, and you could use the learning.” Adal looked back at him, still trailing behind. She slowed enough to reach and ruffle his hair. “Tracking men’s easier than tracking beasties. You’ll learn quick.”

The path through the mesas led down to a broader, paved road, running north to south. Peda hunkered in the ditch alongside, gesturing for the others to go ahead. Their scouts dropped low, slinking into the shadows of scrubby trees as Adal led her two north up the ditch, cutting across forty paces up. The complex was in the shadow of the hills, the sun sunk to a memory behind, leaving a few hunched buildings along the road.

“What was this place, ma?” Ches whispered, pacing her footstep for footstep.

“Old world traveled from places like this,” she said, sweeping the horizon. “Had machines that took them around the world.”

“How?”

“Magic,” Sen said, wiggling his eyebrows.

“Shh.” They stopped alongside a fallen fence, thatched over with weeds. Adal could pick out the scouts approaching the first building.

“Real dark,” Sen said, frowning at the complex.

“Nobody living here now,” Adal said.

One of the scouts stepped out of the building. A fusion lantern lit up in his hand, and he raised it high, calling, “We’re too late.”

“Hell,” she said, slinging her gun. “Sen, if you can…”

“Sure, sure,” he said, moving to join Peda as she crossed the road.

“What’s wrong?” Ches said, following as she stood.

Adal sighed, folded her arms. “Our red-flag men came through already. There’s probably bodies inside, and they probably didn’t die clean,” she said. He stared up at her, mouth grim. “If nobody’s set them to rights, we’re…I don’t know how these people tended their dead, but they don’t deserve to be _left_. I won’t ask you to come with, or to stay if you do, or even help if you don’t think you can. No shame in that.”

“I…” He looked towards the buildings, taking a deep breath. “I…think I gotta, ma. These men, I just…”

“Help you make up your mind on it all?” she said. He nodded. Adal reached out, put her hand on his shoulder instead of fussing with his hair. “Nobody’ll think less of you if you gotta leave, or you get sick. Don’t tough it out.”

“I’m gonna help,” he said, squaring his shoulders.

She gave him another pat, and turned towards the others. Peda stood on the road to the first building, waiting. She looked past Adal, to Ches, back to her with a questioning look. Adal nodded, and Peda cleared her throat. “They’re in the second building down, the big one. Ches, go have a look through this one for some cloth. The rest of you, come on. Let’s get it done.”

They hadn’t made an example of these, so far from towns, trade routes. The massive door to the building, taking up most of the wall, had long since collapsed. Adal could smell the stench of rot well before they reached the entrance.

Most of the dead had been lined up along the inside wall, painted with spatters of blood and tissue, bullet holes staring back in the light of Eng’s lantern. A cluster of radroaches skittered away from the light, and Harris made quick work with a few strokes of his spear. Adal pressed a hand to her mouth at the smell from the bodies, and beside her, she heard Sen take a quick, hacking breath. She paused, looked to him, but he gritted his teeth and gestured for them to step up.

The bodies had been left where they fell, heaped together against the wall. They had lain long enough in the desert heat to be pliable again, and Adal cringed at the feel of a woman’s bony wrists in her hands, Sen holding her ankles. She kept her eyes up, desperately trying not to think of what was left of her head.

They laid the bodies out, feet toward the road, arms folded on their chests. Peda patted one of the men down, checking pockets on what looked like an old set of coveralls, stitched and painted with a pattern of old-world flying machines. Finding a small knife, she closed his hand around it. “Don’t know that the rest were armed, but I hate leaving them empty-handed…”

“I’ll have a look,” Sen said, voice strained. He retreated from the line, just under a dozen tribals laid out as respectfully as the Walker knew how.

Adal looked at them as much as she dared, frowning. “Not enough to be an entire tribe. Just older people, a couple that might have been fighters,” she said. “We should check the rest of the complex.”

Light footfalls came around the side of the building. “Ma, _sii_ Peda, I found…”

Ches stopped short, a bundle of white fabric under one arm. Eng’s lantern shone on a man, the top of his skull turned to paste, every tooth in his lower jaw visible, tongue lolling over the void of his throat.

He dropped the fabric and staggered back, barely getting out of sight before starting to retch.

Sen nudged Adal on the arm, passing her a pistol, a couple of knives. “I’ll go check the next,” he said, gesturing for the others to follow.

“You asked him to come?” Peda asked, low.

“He wanted to,” Adal said, pressing the weapons into the dead tribals’ hands. “Jeth’s getting to him. Says we ought to fall in with Santi. Boy needed to make up his own mind.”

Peda sighed. “Leave him in the dust, Adal. I know he was good to you when Ches was a baby, but…”

“You think I haven’t…?” She waved her hands around her head, shooing the conversation away.

The retching had stopped, replaced with the scrape of a trowel. The two of them spread out the sheet, cutting a square for each of the bodies. Ches joined them after a moment, head ducked, silently taking the finished squares and piling them together. He didn’t look down as he followed Peda, eyes on the horizon as she tucked a cloth over each of their faces.

The others returned as she worked, shaking their heads at Adal’s questioning look. They waited for Peda to reach the end of the line, sighing as she looked at them all. “Should’ve brought a forager,” she muttered, but straightened her back, cleared her throat. “You were Mob, out of the air-field there” she said, looking down at the bodies. “We only know you as a name in a song. We don’t know how you kept yourself or tended your dead, but we hope your ghosts and your kin understand what we did here was out of respect. Walk well.”

Heads were bowed. The only sound was the soft sigh of the breeze through the canyon, the chirrup of insects. The lantern had been extinguished, Adal’s night vision came back in the light of the stars, at the sad little scene beside the building.

One of them sniffed, breaking the moment. “We saw a trail going south, on the road,” Voss said. “A group. Either the rest of the tribe, or…”

“The Bull-men,” Peda said. She looked up at the stars, the arc of the moon. “We have some time. Ches.” He jumped, beside Adal. “On point with Harris, he’s our best tracker. He can show you some things.”

“Do we know for sure it was…” Ches trailed off, the other hunters watching.

“It fits how they work,” Adal said. “Only bunch I know who would kill a few and leave the place empty like this.”

“Nothing else was touched,” Sen said, fidgeting with the strap of his rifle. “Food, medicines, salvage. Any tribe would have gutted the place.”

“Only way to know is to follow the trail,” Peda said, heading for the road. The rest followed, Harris and Ches taking the lead.

“And if we find them?” Sen asked, still trying to find where his sling should rest.

“Give ‘em hell,” Adal said.

Peda nodded. “Give ‘em hell.”

Ches and Harris led them off the highway, into the trails alongside the road. The mesa loomed up on their west, casting a shadow in the moonlight, giving them cover. They slowed at a break in the cliff, another road cutting into it, a junction. The rest of them caught up, and Harris leaned on his spear as Ches frowned at the dirt. “They…split up. Most of them went south. The rest took the road west.”

“Good eye,” Harris said. Peda crouched down, examining the trail. “Which way, boss?”

“Don’t call me that,” she said, absently. She sat back on her heels, frowning at the south road. “If they took anyone, theyd’ve gone south. That’s the bigger group. But this is as far as we can go, and still get a rest before we walk tomorrow…”

“Hell with that,” Voss said. “If they have captives, it’s on us to free them.”

“They took the air-field days ago. No way we’ll catch up without leaving our band behind,” Peda said. She sucked a breath between her teeth, stood. “The smaller group. Just scout it, see if they’re close. If they’re not, we need to turn back.”

“Can we take one alive?” They all turned to Adal. “Everything we know about them is circumstance. If we can question one…?”

“You have it in you to kill a prisoner?” Peda said. “Because we can’t bring an enemy back to camp, and there’s no way we can let him go, tell the others about us.”

The other hunters shifted uncomfortably. Adal looked away.

Peda brought her rifle to hand, gesturing down the road. “Ches, fall back with your ma. Voss, Harris, up front…”

They broke, one group staying up the slope against the canyon wall, the other skirting a smaller drop closer to the road. A soft hiss, and they ducked down, peering ahead.

A light flickered against the mesa, a fire built low. Peda gestured for the scouts to go ahead. In the lower run, Adal frowned at her, jerking her chin towards the camp. Peda made a slashing motion at her throat, pointed at her. _Stay put._

Adal grimaced, but kept behind a boulder, staring up the slope. She could see the light from the fire, but no signs of life; whoever laid it either too distant in the night, or below her line of sight. Her eyes wandered, down into the valley, and she pressed herself low as movement caught her eye, gesturing for Sen and Ches to follow.

A man was walking along the line of rocks, set to pass above their heads. Adal spared a glance uphill, at Peda and her group—well in the stranger’s line of sight, and her frowning after their scouts, unaware. “Ches,” she whispered, holding out her hand.

He glanced up at the ledge, down to her, and swallowed. “I can…”

“No.” She took the spear from him, weighing it, shorter and lighter than she was used to. She brought her arm back and waited, giving the sentry a chance to turn away, to stop, anything…

His path put him against the stars, silhouetting the armor, the close-fit hood, different than what the Walker wore. A bundle of spears rested on his back, but no line of a gun. His steps hesitated, slowed, and Adal followed his gaze to Peda, still facing away.

The spear arced lower than she hoped, misjudging the weight, sinking up to the haft in his gut. Adal vaulted the ledge as he fell to a knee, locking his arm and clapping a hand over his mouth as he tried to cry out. Sen was on her tail, grabbing his free hand as he clawed at her. In her hiding place, Peda jumped, scowling at him before looking back towards the fire.

An answering shout, in an unfamiliar voice. Adal swore, dropping the sentry and coming up with her gun. From the higher vantage, she could make out three around the fire, scrambling to their feet. She accounted for one, making the shot count, the other two falling to the other hunters.

Peda strode over to them, Sen with the stranger’s arms wrapped behind his back. The lantern flicked on, and he barely flinched away. The spear had been dislodged in the struggle, leaving a dark stain, his face gone pale. Adal studied him, built like a warrior, the armor on his shoulders adding to his bulk, red shirt, black kilt—identical to the men they’d found in Mesa Verde.

He rolled his eyes to look at them as Peda crouched beside. In English, she asked, “Who are you?”

“We are…Legion,” he gritted. “And we— _hng_ …” Sen tightened his grip as he struggled, stopping to pant. “True to Caesar, we will come for you, the…dissolute. And we will…”

“Where are you coming from? Where are you taking people?”

“Find us, and find out.” He rasped a breath, face snarled in pain and spite. “Teach you curs…war…”

He slumped, barely breathing, and Sen let him drop. Peda pulled back an eyelid, to no response. “Bled out,” she said, standing. She nudged the spear with her foot. “Ches? Did you—”

“Me,” Adal said. “He’d spotted you.”

She frowned, but nodded. “We’ve been out long enough. Check the others for anything interesting, maps, radios, whatever. We’ll stay in the valley south of camp, in case there’s more of them to track us back.”

Adal stooped for her shell casing, and Ches’s spear. He hesitated before closing a hand on the grip, holding it like the blade might fly off and bite him. “You have a cloth?” Adal asked.

“Yeah,” he said, barely audible, but reached for his belt pouch.

“Just like hunting, kiddo. Blood’s blood. It’ll still rust like the devil if you leave it wet.” She looked at Peda, patting the sentry down. “Anything interesting?”

She held up something that caught the light, ran her thumb over it before tossing it to Adal. The metal was warm, buttery in her hand, heavy for its size. She squinted at it in the starlight, one side with a balding man, the other a single-headed bull. “That’s them, from Verde. Same people they were talking about In Pardox. Same flag was flying at Melthin and Durango, along with…” She glanced at Ches, dabbing carefully at the blood on the spear. “Any idea what it says?”

“Not sure. Might see if Jun is talking to us, she’s our language lady.” She took a few papers, a battered book from the returning hunters. “Come on. We ought to get _some_ rest tonight.”


	3. Chapter 3

The hunters who had gone out dragged at the back of the group, half a night’s restless sleep doing no favors. Ches paced beside Adal, using his spear as a walking stick, the dark smudges under his eyes making the blackened one worse.

Ahead, a few of the kids yelled, adults dodging as they charged through the group. Adal gave him a nudge. “No muckle today? Thought you were starting as the mutant.”

“Gave it to Alam,” he said, looking down from the spearpoint. “I’m tired.”

Adal ran her thumbs under the straps of her pack. “That the only reason?”

He shrugged, watching the ground.

She looked at the group ahead, rather than press. Fen, the only forager who would walk with them, was head-to-head with Peda, poring over the papers from the strangers’ camp. Jeth was somewhere in the crowd, not acknowledging her as they packed up to leave that morning. Alam had been with him, looking uncertainly from one adult to the other, given his brother a shrug. The rest of the band had treated them as if they were invisible, bumping into them rather than avoid them, talking over them unheeded, redistributing food and goods without an offer made to the hunters.

“Mear said he saw a night stalker, on watch last night.” Adal said. Ches shrugged again, with even less heart than the last. “Could break off the group, see what we find.”

“Maybe.” He scuffed at a rock laying on the highway. “I’m tired.”

Her heart sank. She looked away, and Sen did the same, close enough to hear but polite enough to pretend he hadn’t. “Come on,” she said, striking off to the west of the road. “Let’s go scout.”

“Should we leave the group?” he said, hesitating.

“These slowpokes can only walk as fast as Santi, what hunters would we be if we couldn’t catch up?” she said, over her shoulder. “Come on! Let’s see what’s out here.”

The shallow valley of the highway crested up into a hill, all sloping back down into a basin to the west. Adal took them along the ridge, the vantage giving them a view of the Walker along the road to the right, the hills and washes to their left. “So what’d Harris tell you about tracking?”

“Mostly stuff I knew. Said it was a little like learning to read,” he said. “That you gotta learn how each animal leaves a mark. Means a lot of practice.”

She nodded, tugging at her hood to shade her eyes. “What else?”

“That you don’t have to look for every footprint, or whatever.” He tapped along behind her with his spear, climbing over a boulder. “You need to try and think like them, look ahead to a path they might take.”

She nodded, pointing down at a game trail in the dust. “That look like anything?”

Ches squatted next to it. “No, but you pointed it out.” Adal grinned. He didn’t look up, frowning up and down the track. “Are these…?”

“You’ll see ‘em better if you watch for shadows,” she said. “Put the sun behind you”

He shuffled around, peering at the dirt, went, “Oh.” Sitting back to point with his whole hand along their direction, he said. “Is that a night stalker?”

“Mole rat,” she said, pointing to a pile of pellets. “Not just tracks you’re looking for, kiddo. Fresh, too.”

“Gross.” She stepped aside to let him lead. He kept his head down, casting around for more signs. He stopped at the head of a burrow, kicking at the dust. “So now what?”

“Eyes up.” He followed her gaze, a narrow access road, a fragment of metal sticking up over the hill. “Even if they don’t nest there, might be worth checking out.”

“I guess,” he said, and glanced at the road, the Walker still roughly level with them. “Should we get a forager? If it’s an Old World place?”

“I doubt we’ll need ‘em. It won’t have been someone’s home, this far out.” Adal heard him follow, a step behind. “Would it make you feel better to leave something anyway?”

“S’pose,” he said, bashful. “I mean, we shouldn’t waste our supplies on ghosts, and I don’t know how…”

“I know some things. My da was a forager.” They hit a peak in the ridge, revealing a little square building, a radio tower beside. A shape reared up next to it, sniffing the air. “There’s rats here, too, you can practice your animal work. How do you intimidate something can’t see your eyes?”

He hummed and hawed, and Adal let him work it out, collecting dry twigs from the weeds as they walked. She let him approach the mole rat on his own, keeping the sun behind him as he stepped up, looking as big as possible. He didn’t hesitate as he got close, and the rat wavered, snuffling, finally turning away and wandering off, squeaking its teeth against themselves. Ches looked back to her, grinning so hard the top of his head might come off, and she beamed right back. “Good on you, kiddo. Night stalker doesn’t stand a chance.”

She let him arrange the twigs into a cone, dug through what was left of her jerky. “You don’t wanna go stingy. Give what you would to a friendly stranger, or else whatever ghost is here will come after _you_ with its stomach rumbling.”

“Do ghosts have stomachs?” he asked, setting the meat on the pile, and sighing as it all collapsed. 

“They _think_ they do. Even the Old World ones lived in bodies once, and remember all their fleshly needs,” she said, handing him a flint striker. “It’s better to burn it to ash, if you can spare the fuel. But a small place like this was just a waystation, doubt anyone died out here, or ever actually lived. You go into a town, or a home, or a big building, you might do a whole meal for them, and take an hour to make sure it’s all down to cinders.”

He nodded along, watching the smoke curl up. “Do we say anything?”

“Da said it wasn’t necessary, unless you had a feeling the place needed it,” she said. “But you can be polite and invite them to the offering, as it burns up, or thank them for shelter and salvage, or if you get a real bad vibe off the place, beg forgiveness for trespassing.”

“Oh.” He sat back on his heels, fingertips on the ground. “Can I…?”

“Go head.”

Ches cleared his throat. “Ghosts of, um, this place…Please take this bit of food, in thanks, for letting us bother you.” He raised his head, spreading his hands. “Walk well.”

He glanced to her for approval, and she smoothed her smile down to something sober. “Your grandda would be proud.”

“How do you tell, if a place has ghosts in it? The dangerous kind?” he asked, following as she stood.

“Dunno. That’s for the foragers to learn,” she said, turning the doorknob. “Could ask your grand, at Crossroads.”

“We could,” he said. “I don’t really know him, I guess…”

“We only walked with him and your gramma when you were too little to remember,” she said, pushing it open. “He’s half, too. His da was a tribal out around Texas way, a Bonebreaker.”

“Was he?” he said, face lighting up.

“He absolutely was. I’m a quarter, your grandda’s half, and not anyone gives us shit about it,” she said. “Walker’s more than these, what, thirty-odd people? Lot more of us are mixed than you think. Than the _kids_ with us think.”

“Like grandda,” he said, thoughtful.

“Just like,” she said, stepping inside. “I was thinking, when the bands split up again this autumn, maybe we should walk with them.”

“Why haven’t we been?” The words were sharp, and he ducked his head. He followed her in, elbows drawn close, examining every corner of the building. “I mean, I don’t wanna…”

“My ma and I had a falling out. She doesn’t like Jeth. Said I could either walk with him or her.” The building was full of radio equipment, dark and dead. She went to the desk in the corner, tracing a finger through the dust. “So, if we do walk with your grands, I guess…”

No response. Adal looked back at him, over her shoulder. His lips were pressed thin, uncertain, his black eye making him look all the more vulnerable. “I don’t…” and almost too soft to hear, “…I don’t really like him either.”

She reached out, “Come here.”

“I don’t need a hug, ma,” he said, but let himself be gathered up.

“Well, maybe I need one, how about that?” He hid his face against her shoulder. Rubbing his back above his pack, she sniffed and said, “This isn’t fair to you. I’m sorry it’s gone on so long.”

He nodded against her and pulled away, drying his face on his scarf. She let him get a hold of himself, pulling open the desk drawers as she wiped her cheeks with a hand. The top ones held papers, a couple odd tools, but the bottom one... “Here,” she said, gathering it up. “Glad you made an offering.”

Sniffing one last time, he unrolled the belt, stopping at the sight of the gun’s antler handle. “Oh, wow. Ma, I can’t—”

“Not like a rifle, not so much ceremony in it,” she said. “You were good with the nine-mil those townies let you practice on, and even better with that BB toy those tribal girls had, so I think it’s time you carried one of your own.”

He did up the belt at his waist, drew the revolver reverently. She showed him how the loading gate worked, the safety in the different positions of the hammer. Ches held it out, after checking it over, sighting out the window, and drew a sharp breath. “ _Ma_.”

Adal looked out, dropping low. “Hell. Ches, get down.”

Three men were walking along the access road, a stone’s throw from them. They wore the same armor as the men from the night before, one of them with a flag on his back, a golden bull on red. They paused on the road, heads raised. The door still ajar, Adal could faintly make out the sound of the Walker, voices raised as they kept time with a jody.

“What do we do?” Ches whispered, back to the radio console.

She bared her teeth, a hand on her rifle. “We can’t let them—”

A screech from outside, and one of the strangers cracked off a shot. A mole rat lunged for his legs, and he kicked it aside, the three of them backing away. Another, two rose from burrows hidden between the rocks, but firearms made short work of them.

“Other hunters must hear that,” she whispered. Ches nodded, face drawn. “The spear, if it comes to it. Don’t know that gun well enough yet.”

His eyes flicked out the window, back to her, but he nodded again. The men called to each other, in a language she didn’t know, the sound of it tracking around the side of the building. Adal shouldered her rifle, and Ches brought his spear level, shifting into a crouch. A shadow fell on the door, and she sized it up, drawing a bead heart-high.

The door opened. He fell before he even registered them, the man behind shouting surprise, out of her sight. A bullet went _spang!_ off the radio equipment, but Ches didn’t flinch, throwing hard, drawing a wet scream from outside.

He stared after it in shock, and the glass left in the window burst inward. A fist closed on the front of his shirt, dragging him back as he struggled. Adal yelled, and the man outside barely focused on the end of her gun before she fired.

Ches scrambled away on his rear, staring at his corpse, flopped through the window with the back of his head gone. He got to his feet and staggered out the door, standing with his hands on knees. Adal followed, sweeping the landscape for any other threats.

Footsteps pounded up the hill, Cala and Eng cresting it with spears ready. “I think that’s all of them,” Adal said, lowering her gun. “They were coming across the basin, I think, up from the river to the west.”

“That’s too close.” Cala said, looking over the scene. “Hey, Ches, you alright?”

He still had his back to them, but had straightened, a hand on his stomach. “I think so,” he said, but faintly. One of the strangers lay before him, spear lodged the break in his armor, high in his chest.

“Good throw,” Adal said. With a nod at the enemy, she added, “Quick.” Ches gave her a look she couldn’t read, and he reached for the spear.

“What was that?”

They all looked to where Eng was pointing, back out into the basin, hands on weapons. “I saw a flash. Reflection, or something.”

The sun raised heat shimmers out in the dust, and even with all of them watching, it didn’t reappear. “Gone now,” Cala said, but uneasy.

“They did for some mole rats,” Adal said, still looking out at the expanse. “Should bring them back rather than waste.”

“Right…” Eng dropped his hand, but his eyes stayed on the horizon.

“The strangers,” Ches said, and the rest paused to look at him. He tightened his grip on his spear. “Should we lay them out…?”

“They didn’t earn it,” Adal said, grabbing a mole rat by the leg. “Leave them to rot.”

It was quick work to field-dress the rodents, leaving the offal to the desert’s scavengers. Each of the adults pulled one across their shoulders, ready to make time, the rest of the band well ahead. Adal paused, on impulse, and grabbed something from one of the bodies. She took one last look in the direction Eng had pointed, hoping to see something, praying she would see nothing.

There was a flicker of black in the heat haze, small and warped enough to be anything.

Cold despite the sweat of exertion, she moved to catch up with the others.


	4. Chapter 4

There was a town ahead. They had built shacks under the Seventy as it passed over the smaller, north-south road, a trading post for caravans, tribals, and anyone else wandering the Old World’s trails. The Walker camped just off the road, staying south of the town. The hunters set up on the far side of a wash, a shallow rift between them and the band. Adal snorted, the dawn light making her too restless to sleep, poking one of the jerky fires. Peda wasn’t so poetical, so her wife had probably suggested it.

A couple foragers had joined them last night, a mender. They had followed Adal and Peda back across the wash, after they had gone to Santi, tried to impress on him how close the strangers were, explain, but he had stared through them, silent, turning away only to stir a pot on the fire. Adal’s frustration had turned to anger, but Peda had taken her by the arm, pulled her away before she could open her mouth on something unforgivable.

She pulled a piece of jerky off the rack, wrinkled her nose at the bitter mole rat flavor. Dry enough. She stepped across the gap, patting one of the ox-brahmin as she went. Their panniers had been piled near the camp, the animals left to graze during the night. The other one snuffled at her as she dug, its further head straining after a tuft of grass. She gave it an idle push and it sidled over, tearing it up by the roots.

The basket that _should_ have held cloth was nearly empty, just one rumpled pouch dropped inside. She went through the rest of the bags, checked the other animal’s gear. Adal propped herself up on a knee, scowling at the rest of the band, coming awake with the dawn. “So none of you want to eat, then?”

A few of them looked to her, frowning, before looking aside, away, anywhere but acknowledge her. She threw up her hands and stalked back towards the wash.

“Psst! Ma!”

Adal scowled at the voice, tried to school it away as she turned. “Alam, you can just _talk_ to me.”

He kept the ox-brahmin between himself and the camp, crouched to keep behind its shoulder, even keeping his feet in line with its hooves. “I gotta be sneaky, though. Santi’s shunning you and I still want Vell to talk to me.”

“Mari’s girl?” He ducked his head, shrugged. Adal sighed. “Well, you’re hid. What did you need, dearling?”

“Da wanted me to tell you—”

“Hold on,” she said, holding up a hand. “If he’s got something to say, he can do it himself. Not get you wrapped up in it.”

“Yeah, but he wanted me to…”

“Where’s he set up?”

He ducked his head again, bashfulness gone to avoidance, picking a scab of mud on the animal’s side. “I don’t think he’d…”

Adal growled under her breath, stomping off. She stopped in her tracks to say, in the brahmin’s direction, “I’m not mad at _you_ ,” before continuing on.

Jeth had part of the brahmin harness across his lap, fussing with a spool of sinew. He clenched his jaw as she crouched across from him, but continued working a lump of wax over the cord. “Whatever you have to say to me can’t be _that_ urgent, if you won’t speak to me yourself.”

He twisted the end of the sinew into a needle, looking down at the harness.

Adal leaned closer, where he couldn’t avoid seeing her. “You stop pulling them into this. They’re _children_. If you have a problem with _me,_ then tell _me._ ”

Jeth kept picking at the harness, a vein bulging on his forehead.

“You know what, I don’t even want you talking to Ches anymore. About anything. I—”

“Goddamn it, Adal!” He threw down the spool. “I helped _raise_ that boy! And now you’re telling me not to talk to him? You’re the one having him run around with a _gun_ now!”

“He’s ten, Jeth! I was hunting _alone_ at his age!”

“Because you’ve mothered him like a broody gecko, and he hasn’t had a chance to—”

“Oh, first he’s too old for his age, now he’s too _young_ for it. Make up your damn mind.” She put a hand to her head, smoothing back her hair.

“I have, Adal,” he said, pushing the harness off his lap. “And if you would just shut up and listen—”

“No. I don’t have to put up with you.”

“Don’t you walk away.”

“Careful, shun’s catching!”

He stopped short at the edge of the wash, glaring after her. “And if you die out there? Chasing after these Bull men of yours? What happens to them then?”

“Anything but _you!_ ” she shouted, grabbing handfuls of mole rat meat off the rack.

He scoffed. “Leave them orphans, for your pride? I—”

“Take it out of camp, you two!”

One of the other menders had stood up, frowning at them both. “We’re all stressed enough right now, without dealing with you two going at it again,” she shouted. “So either shut up, or get out of camp.”

Adal felt her ears go red, burning at the mutters of the closest Walker. Jeth adjusted his hood, hiding his face a little more deeply. He shot her one last scowl before going back to his mending.

The other hunters were packing up, frowning in that general _I agree but don’t want to say it_ way that put her hackles up. Adal stuffed her own jerky pouch full, and filled the spare with such force that the seams almost burst. “I’m going to trade off my share, if these ingrates don’t want to eat. Don’t care what you do with the rest.”

An old, faded banner had been hung up on the side of the bridge, proclaiming JOE’S JUNCTION WELCOMES YOU. Fabric, it was, but so old and full of grime it rattled like a plank when the wind touched it. The townies were slower to rise than the Walker—always were, and she snorted—and most of the shacks lining the road still had closed doors. One was open, a man sweeping dust out onto the pavement.

“Good morning,” she called. He stopped sweeping long enough to raise a hand. “You Joe?”

His laugh was a tired one, for a tired joke. “Go by Cletus, actually, miss.”

“You trade, Mr. Cletus, or should I wait for one of these loafs?” she said, pointing a thumb at the closed shacks.

Cletus chuckled and set the broom aside. “Well, I got a little bit of everything, miss, so let’s see what we can do.”

The inside of the shop was packed, shelves stacked to the ceiling with junk, old tools, weird rocks, go-knew-what. He ducked and wove through it all with practiced ease, and Adal took off her pack at the door, giving more room to wriggle after him. He plopped down behind a bench, and she took up a chair opposite, something torn out of a vehicle and set atop a crate. “So, what’re you in the market for?”

“Ammo, if you have it,” she said, looking at the mess around her. “Always up for food, road supplies.”

He nodded. “And offering?”

Adal rummaged through her pack, setting things out on the counter. “Got a few caps. Mole rat hide, raw, tanned blue gecko. Enough mole rat jerky to choke a deathclaw.”

“Wouldn’t take much,” he said, unrolling the gecko hide for a better look.

She hesitated with a hand on a bundle of fabric, debating before drawing it out. “Willing to buy information, too, if you deal in it.” She unfolded the flag on the counter, the gold bull on it bloodstained. “You seen this mark?”

He frowned, turned it over. “Some men came through here last week, carrying one like this.”

Adal leaned her elbows on the counter, waiting.

“Traded with these,” he said, opening a lock box. He handed her a coin, silver metal, a man’s portrait on one side, three standing men on the other. “Real silver, far as I can tell. Called themselves part of Caesar’s Legion. Not a tribe I heard of before.”

“How many of them were there?” she asked, handing the coin back.

“Eight, couple dogs with them,” he said. Cletus chewed his lip a moment, setting a few boxes of ammo on the bench. “Miss, if you have some grudge with them, I’d encourage you to rethink it. I’ve heard enough rumors about them, and seeing these men in person…”

“Eight…Which direction did they come from?”

“The east. Didn’t say where, exactly, but they came through the Thompson pass. Said they’d taken care of the raiders from out that way, and, well, they certainly haven’t bothered us since.” He said nothing as she counted through a box of .357. “I’ll give you this for free: They shot one of our people dead on the spot for talking back. We lost contact with the tribe out of Mob, and some are saying it was them. They’re leaving the towns intact, mostly, but tribes…”

“We know,” she said, drawing up a bit of scrap metal from her pack. “They tried to jump us all the way down in Mesa Verde. Been driving north since, but they just seem to be everywhere.”

His eyes widened. “All that way…?”

“Different groups, too. Killed a couple of their squads, but there’s always more.”

He folded up the flag and pushed it back towards her. “You keep this. They come back through here, I won’t be caught with it.”

“Fair,” she said, dropping it on her lap. “So where were we? The gecko’s enough to cover the .357, but I’ll always take some .45-70.”

He was subdued for the rest of her visit, sending her off with a final nod, avoiding her eyes. Adal stopped outside of the shack, shrugging her pack back on, leaving the waist belt to hang as she crossed the road towards camp. She paused midway, shading her eyes at the rising sun, ears pricked. A column of dust rose behind the bend of the road, and singing voices accompanied it.

Walker from her band had come out to the road, watching. The other group rounded the bend, hooded folk of all ages, headed by a wizened figure leaning on a cudgel. Both bands set up a ruckus, shouting and whistling, waving to one another, a few younger folk running ahead to meet each other.

One of her own stepped up beside her, out of the crowd. “They gonna shun us, too?” Ches asked, face glum.

“I dunno,” she said, something rising in her chest. Santi was on the road, and the Walker around them made room as the other Elder stepped up. She gave him a little punch on the arm. “Ha! I doubt they will. That’s Gabrel, kiddo. She’s good people.”

“Oh.” He stood a little straighter. “She was the one who gifted you your gun.”

“That she was. Circle Junction, same night I walked off with you.”

“ _Maaaa…._ ”

She chuckled at his disgust. “Two best gifts I ever got,” she said. A few of the new kids had hung back from the noise, giving the strangers shy looks. She gave him a nudge. “Go say hi.”

“We’re being shunned,” he said, pulling up the strap on his pack.

“Not by them,” she said. “Go on. Show them the gecko claws you’re collecting, you got enough to do a good necklace of ‘em.”

He was a little hesitant, approaching them, but they waved back, beckoned him closer. Adal smiled after him, buckled up the rest of her pack, and went to find the hunters.

***

“It was sixteen in Verde,” Adal said, walking in step with Peda. “They said eight in Pardox. We found four in Mob canyon, three more along the highway here.”

“You think we missed one,” Peda said, voice low, her baby dozing restlessly in her sling.

“I think we did. Eng spotted something in the basin, a flash, too far to make out. Someone with a scope, maybe. Binoculars.”

She dropped her head, thinking. The joint band around them had given up on singing after setting pace, but the road was still full of voices, friends and relatives catching up after years apart. Santi’s hunters had mingled with them, Gabrel’s newcomers either unaware or ignoring the shunning for the sake of new faces.

“I talked with Wilm, Gabrel’s senior hunter,” she said at last. “They’ve run into them too, but managed to keep their distance. He’s bringing it up with her for me.”

“Think he’ll plead our case? Only one might get through to Santi is another Elder.”

She shrugged. Already waking up fussy, Ayla gurgled at the motion. “Can only hope. I knew him a few Walks ago, he’s got his head on right.”

“Here’s hoping it still is,” Adal said. She let Peda be, getting the baby to nurse and settle back down. She wove through the crowd, nodding and sharing a word with some of Gabrel’s people, looking for hunters of either group. She caught a flash of light off the tip of a spear, held like a walking stick, and started after it—and stopped just as fast.

Ches was laughing at something one of the others had said, head ducked, a little hesitant. Shy, the poor thing, but she slowed to watch, glad to see him making friends. There were three of them in plain child’s scarves, all with a knife of some kind, apprentices. The other two were taller, of a height with Ches, but with that gangly growth-spurt look; one in a hunter’s hood whose leather still looked stiff and in need of staking, the other in foraged cloth, the stripes on it crisp, not yet faded by the sun. 

Adal smiled to herself, and stepped a little faster, spotting a rifle on a stranger’s back.

Ches stumbled, nearly fell. Walking beside him, the boy in the hunter’s hood cackled, a cruel edge to it as the others joined in. Adal changed direction to close in with them, mouth open to yell, but Ches came up swinging. The older boy doubled over from a punch to the gut, but snarled, hitting him full in the face closed-handed. She lost sight of them as Ches lunged.

The Walker ahead of her stopped, voices raised in surprise. “What the hell! Get them off each other!” she shouted, pushing through the line. The older boy was on his back, shielding his face and head, Ches sitting atop him, screaming as he hammered at him.

“ _Stop!_ ”

She grabbed him, arms up under his, hands locked behind his head. Ches thrashed, screaming, “You don’t know that! You don’t _fucking_ know that!”

“Settle _down!_ ” she yelled over it, wincing as his heels hit her shins. But he went still, or nearly, shaking with emotion.

The other kids helped the young hunter to stand, a few adults pressing through the crowd to him. Adal cringed, his face a bloody mess. “He attacked me!” he said, thick-voiced with a bloody nose and bitten tongue. He pointed at Ches, who tried to buck free. “We were just foolin’ around, and he—”

“He tripped me! He said they won’t make me a hunter ‘cause I’m half, and—”

A couple stood on either side of him, his mother opening her mouth to speak. “You talk to your boy,” Adal said, cutting her off. She let Ches go, took his arm before he could argue and marched him toward the side of the road.

The highway they followed now ran east-west, low hills to the north and the basin to the south. She glanced back at the Walker, the entire group stalled, milling as they whispered between them. After a moment, she heard Gabrel raise her voice, clear and carrying, calling cadence with the jody listing off the Utah tribes.

They started to move, and Ches pulled out of her grip, stumbling a few steps ahead. She let him go, hanging back as he sank to his haunches next to one of the basin’s many dried-up feeder streams, the fold of it hiding him from the road. He yanked his scarf down, knife in his other hand, and started taking tufts of hair off his head.

“Hey! Hey, hey, hey.” She grabbed his wrists, pulled the knife out of his hand and set it aside. “Settle down. Hey.” He didn’t look up at her, tears running down his face. She tried not to join him as he pulled away, but she kept her grip. “Let me see your hands.”

She had to look one at a time, giving him the other to wipe his face as she pinched at his hands, probing for breaks in the long bones of the palm. His knuckles were split, skin scraped up against the other boy’s teeth and face. Ches stared at the dirt as she worked. “No breaks, and you were hitting hard. Good wrists,” she said, trying to draw him out.

He only clenched his teeth as she rinsed his hands off with water from her canteen, wrapped a bandage with healing powder over the knuckles. He sat back when she let go, resting his forehead almost on his knees, hands on his shins.”He got you in the face, too,” she said. “Need it cleaned up?”

“I rolled it,” he said, voice small. The sound of the Walker, their song, was fading. “You gonna scold me now?”

She crossed her legs and sat side-on to him, not so close as to crowd. “He started it. I saw him trip you.” He shrugged, still curled up on himself, the anger gone to make way fro exhaustion. “You’d already won, though, dropping him. Should’ve let him up.”

He glared at her, one eye hidden. “Oh, now you’re gonna be like _Jeth_ and tell me I ought to be _nice_ to the people who pick on me?”

“No, I’m gonna tell you to pound the thin red snot out of anyone who lays a hand on you,” she said. “And what’s Jeth said? This is the first time you’ve been fighting…” He wrapped his arms around his knees, hiding his face. “First time I _caught_ you fighting.” Ches stayed put, but she thought she saw the faintest nod. “With who?”

“Nobody,” he muttered.

Adal put a hand to her head. “Dearling, you should’ve said something…”

“Wouldn’t’ve stopped it,” he said to his feet.

She sighed. “Maybe. I don’t know. Would’ve kicked their asses for you.”

“S’what I worried about.”

The laugh died in her throat, as he peered at her, dead serious. She looked away. “Old enough you don’t need your ma to fight a battle for you.”

He shrugged.

She let it rest, swallowing down the lump in her throat. “Should’ve let him up, though. No use beating on someone who isn’t fighting back.”

“I was mad.”

“I know you were,” she said, trying to catch his eye. He stared stubbornly at the dirt. “But you’re both Walker. Family. Blood doesn’t matter so much as us walking the same roads, singing the same histories. This happens again, you knock them down, you help them up. Dust them off and ask if they learned their lesson.”

“If they say no?” he said, turning his head fractionally toward her.

“Knock ‘em down again, then pick ‘em back up,” she said. “Until they say yes.”

“What if they never do?”

“Then you gotta decide then and there if it’s something you’re gonna either kill or die for, or if you can live with walking off.” His face scrunched, worry or fear, and she reached out to squeeze his shoulder. “You’re bigger than your age, Ches, means people—”

“Means I gotta grow up,” he said, bitter.

“No, it means people won’t be fair, are gonna expect—”

“You sound like Jeth.”

She pressed her lips thin, and he shot her a guilty look. The jody was a murmur on the air, almost gone. “We should head back.”

Ches shrank on himself. “I wanna cut my hair.”

“Dearling, if you just let it grow, you can tie it back…”

He pulled at a handful of it, long enough that it was starting to curl, pointing a dozen different directions. “Can I just…?” He gave up, his face twisting.

“Hey, come on,” she said, scooting closer to rub at his back.

“I just want them to leave me alone,” he said, voice cracking.

“Hey, shh,” she said, holding him closer. “I know, baby, I know. Come on, let’s get back from the stream.”

They settled higher on the slope, dirt and weeds between them and any water that might run into the wash. Ches bowed his head as she worked a lather with water from her canteen and a hard little puck of soap. The straight razor she kept for him was still sharp, and he held his breath as she worked, finally sitting up to wipe head head clean with a rag. “Thank you.”

Adal rubbed at the uneven stubble left behind, still a little lighter and finer than most Walker. “Get you a real hood over it, won’t matter so much, maybe.”

“Maybe.” He watched the horizon as he draped his scarf. “What’re we gonna say to his folks?” She didn’t reply, and he frowned at her, sitting up on one knee. “Ma?”

Adal’s hand had gone to her rifle, laying beside them. She brought it up to her shoulder slowly, sighting on something out in the basin.

“Ma?” Ches said, barely a whisper.

She fired once, stood as she cycled the brush gun, fired again. There was the sharp _zip_ of a bullet returning, and Ches dropped back into the wash. He patted at himself for a weapon, hand resting on the revolver, spear somewhere on the road. “Ma, what do we—”

“Stay put. Got one, other’s out there.” Adal reached into her pack long enough to throw him the box of .357, then dropped into a deeper part of the stream bed, following it south.

Adal tried not to breathe as she paced it, placing her steps on mud, sand, ducking under the weeds that leaned over the gap. Every rustle of the brush was an enemy, the chirp of insects became a creak of a boot. Slowly, she got her balance on a boulder, lifting her head above the edge of the bank.

Nothing.

She kept her head still, moving only her eyes, scanning for movement. Nothing, no— _there._

He was crouched behind a little hillock, just in shouting distance, a carbine up on his shoulder. The edge of his tunic fluttered in the breeze, catching her eye, the red and black of his clothes fading into the brown of the dirt. Slowly, Adal put her weight on the side of the wash, leaning into the weeds, bending them without breaking. She got her elbow settled in the sand of it, leveled her gun, breathing with the sway of the sights.

The Legion man raised his head, checking for movement, as she had. He shifted his weight, preparing to stand, and she moved with him, lining up her shot. A hands-breadth of lead, as he started to walk, and—

She shifted her elbow, sending a tumble of loose stone down the slope. She ducked as he fired off a shot, wild, came back up to try and sight him. He was out of sight behind the brush, and she grit her teeth, dropping back into cover to try for a better angle.

Another _crack_ of a gun, smaller and sharper, and Adal was at the edge of the wash. The Legion man stumbled out of his hiding place, clutching his side. She didn’t bother with the sights, eyes on his chest, snapping off a shot that put him down hard.

She hopped out of the wash, staying crouched. Ches started to do the same, some yards away, but she gestured him back down, stalking out to the bodies. She kept her head up, but there was no sign of more on the horizon, no whizz of bullets, no motion. One last breath from the nearer one, as she checked him over for clues, anything useful. Nothing on him, but the first one she’d hit had a knife at his waist. Adal held it flat across her hands, going cold. The blade was a heavy clip-point, like hers, like Ches’s, the handle made from a piece of animal bone. 

“Ma?”

Ches had snuck through the wash, coming up beside her, revolver still in hand. She swallowed and stuck the knife through her belt. “We need to get back to the road. Now.”

He didn’t question as they broke into a run.


	5. Chapter 5

Ches was nearly winded by the time they caught up with the band, Adal still pressing ahead. The afternoon sun was in her eyes, and she shaded them as she slowed. The back of the group turned to peer at her, all with spears and guns—the hunters, fallen back again.

“Peda,” she panted. “Where’s Peda, I have—”

A few of them called for her, the rest pressing close, asking what was wrong as she came to a walk, catching her breath. Behind her, she heard Ches stagger up. “We—we found—”

“What’s the matter?” Peda looked thunderous already, scowling as Adal handed her the knife. It shifted to alarm as she realized what it was. “Where did—”

“We killed two scouts in the basin,” Adal said between breaths. “One had that. They found another band. They’re _killing_ us.”

“Ama take them,” Peda breathed, and a few of the hunters gestured against invoking the Old Goddess.

“We need to go after them. We can pick up their trail, and—”

“We can’t,” Peda said. “Santi’s ordered the foragers out early, says we’re low on supplies.”

“He set us up,” Eng said, fuming. “Figured the best way to keep us here is to make us responsible if the band isn’t defended.”

Adal bared her teeth. “Damn his hide, I—”

“He didn’t consult her on the order.” One of Gabrel’s people dropped back to them, his skin a richer umber than most of the Walker. “She’s arguing it. There’s a town on the river ahead, we’ll probably spend a couple days there while they have it out.”

“It’s gotten more urgent than that, Wilm,” Peda said, handing him the knife. “Some of ours caught Legion scouts with this. If they’re seeking out the Walker, we can’t stay on the road.”

He turned it over, frowned at Adal. “They were coming out of the basin, like the rest,” she said. “They must be following that same river north.”

Wilm nodded, mouth set. He looked past her, said, “You’re the scrapper?” he asked, voice mild.

Adal glanced at Ches, head ducked. “Yes, _sii_ Wilm. I’m sorry.”

The older hunter managed a grin. “Jon’s head’s been too big for that hood since he cut it. He deserved to come down a peg.”

Ches flushed a little, tugging his scarf higher, but seemed pleased.

“I’m taking it to them,” Adal said, and Wilm passed her the knife. “Gabrel knows me. Maybe I can say something that…”

“Walk well,” Wilm said, no small bit grim. Beside him, Peda nodded.

She jogged up through the crowd, most of the band stepping aside, a few of her own catching sight of her and refusing to budge. The jody had ended, everyone fallen back to conversation, but still walking roughly in step with the two figures at their head.

“ _Sii_ Gabrel, I’m sorry to interrupt,” Adal said, coming up on them. “I have news, and—”

“Adal!” Gabrel stood still long enough to gather her up in an embrace. Adal returned it, stooping to put her arms around her shoulders. She looked little different than some ten years ago, braid gone long enough to wrap her neck like a scarf, forager’s hood a little softer than it used to be, a pattern of interlocking lines faded to a dusty green. Her face was still seamed, kind, despite the weather and sun-scorch. “Peda said you were her second now! And your boys have grown so tall…”

“Thank you, sii Gabrel, but—”

“Althea’s gun, wasn’t it? ‘Shield and sacrifice’. It’s served you well?”

Adal opened her mouth, almost ready to scream, but the Elder paced along, unhurried, tapping the pavement with her cudgel. “It has, Elder. I’m still grateful for your gift to me.”

“What kind of auntie would I be if I didn’t know my kin? Even a great-aunt.” The lines in her face doubled as she smiled. “We passed your ma and da in the grasslands last year, they’re on a northern route. They’re doing well, and look forward to seeing your boys at Crossroads.”

“Thank you, Gabrel,” she said, feeling a little weight lift from her. The Legion was all in the south, so if they were… She shook her head. “I’m afraid my news isn’t so good.”

“Santi has told me _all_ about what your band has encountered,” she said, giving him a look. Santi kept walking, no more troubled by it than the buzzing of a fly. “Oh, shun me too, that’s how Cinna got his cudgel broken by the Council,” she said, to no response. The Elder turned back to Adal. “What has happened?”

“One of the Bull-men had this,” she said, passing over the knife.

Gabrel stuck the cudgel under her arm, held the blade flat across her hands as she examined it, then pressed it over her heart. “Your ghost find rest,” she murmured. Adal bowed her head to it, and the Elder took a long breath. “I’ll give it rites tonight, when we camp. From what we have heard of the Legion, for their sake, I hope whoever held this has passed on.”

“Thank you,” Adal said. “But I don’t think we should camp at a town, or anywhere on the highways. We think they’re using the river, and that puts them right on our trail.”

“Are you _certain_ that is their path?” Gabrel asked, eyes sharp.

“No,” Adal said. “But south’s just a lot of flat and dry, and they’ve got a lot of men, as far as we can tell. That says they’re using either a big road or a river, and there’s no highway up the middle of it.”

“So it is,” she said, nodding. “Thank you, hunter. Please leave me and this lump of wood to discuss it.”

Santi gave Gabrel an irritated look as Adal turned to leave. A few caught her eye as she did, close enough to hear. She met the look as the band overtook her, mostly menders, with the foragers sent off, and one or two kept level with her. She heard them follow, dropping back with the hunters and those enduring the shun with them.

Someone snagged her arm, and she elbowed back at them, shaking free. Jeth scowled at her, and she bared her teeth. “I have no time for you right now.”

“Really?” He followed her as she wove back through the group. “Then _you’re_ the one making me go through Alam to speak to you.”

“I’m not making you do _shit_ ,” she said, stopping. “You wanna go?”

“Are you _threatening_ me?”

She took a deep breath, tamping down a harsh _yes_. “You wanna work this out, we do it privately.”

The Walker flowed around them, the hunters at the end giving them a wide berth. Jet put up his hands. “You’re unreasonable. If you’re going to be violent—”

“I’m—” She stopped to breathe. “We are dealing with too damn much with this Legion situation to—”

“Because you and Peda _made_ this situation!” He stabbed a finger at her. “They might have left us alone if you hadn’t sought them out, now _all_ of us are in danger!”

“We’d be dead by now if we hadn’t fought back,” she spat. The rest of the group was past them, and they stood on the road, alone. “Am I the only person in the world you won’t cringe and roll over for?”

His face was inches from hers, and he was a different person as he snarled, “If you hadn’t lost every _shred_ of respect I had left, ruining those boys—”

She shoved him hard, and Jeth staggered to keep his balance. “ _You_ don’t get to say a word against my sons.”

“Don’t you lay a hand on me,” he said, teeth gritted. “You _asked for my help_ raising Ches, Alam’s mine by blood, so don’t you _dare_ —”

“I asked you to _care_ for him, not beat him down because you—”

“Because I _what?_ Because I’m willing to give him discipline, instead of you letting him run wild?”

“You resent him that much? Resent that I can _love_ him and _tolerate_ you?” Adal stood her ground as he straightened, didn’t close the gap. “I’m done with you. Completely. I’m renouncing you to the Elders the _second_ I set foot in the Crossroads grounds. Don’t talk to me, don’t talk to Ches—”

“You’re insane.” He rubbed where her hand had been, as though it burned. “This is why you needed me! _One_ of us has to be mature, and—”

“ _Mature!_ Is that how you see me? Is this still you trying to take care of a girl carrying a newborn _and_ her weight as a hunter?”

“Well, you were doing a shit job of it, he wouldn’t have lived to see _two_ if I hadn’t—”

“You step off your fucking power trip _here_ you slimy—”

“—now you’re teaching _him_ to pick fights, and Alam is left—”

“He picks on Ches because _you_ do! You’re as much a bully as the kid who tripped him!”

He put his hands to his chest. “ _Me?_ You’re the one who thinks she can just shout someone down—”

“I can and I will when it’s just some _dog_ whining over—”

“ _What did you call me?_ ”

There was a breathless moment as she tried to turn all the anger in her to words. She looked south to the basin.

“Don’t pretend you can just take that back, finish what you were—”

“Shut up.” She pushed past him, listening.

“Don’t you talk to…” But he trailed off, hearing it too.

Adal broke into a run, out into the hills. There was a desperate shushing noise, and the sound of a child crying was muffled. She slowed, searching for movement. Nothing. Adal called out, in English, “Who’s out there?” The crying grew quieter still, and she tried again, in the Walker tongue, “Ke zta he’er?”

“Aydaa!” She dashed to the voice, people huddled in the deepest of the washes. She held out her hands, helping one of the the adults climb the bank, passing children up from hand to hand. “I’d thank the Goddess but for the risk,” one of the women said. “Who are you? What band?”

“Santi and Gabrel’s,” she said, looking them over. Four adults, four _Walker_ , and even more children. All of them were dirty and disheveled, blood on their clothes. “What happened?”

“The Legion,” the woman said, taking the crying child back. “We’re Taner’s band, they came on us at the river last week, in the sand dunes. We didn’t stand a chance, we just took the children and…”

“Yes,” she said, rubbing her arm as she started to cry. “We know, we’ve seen them. Come on, our band’s on the road—”

“They can’t stay on the highways,” she said, as they passed Jeth, lagging behind her. “They know there’s more of us.”

“I know,” Adal said, picking up a boy who stumbled as they went. “We’ll get you to our Elders. They’ll want the whole story.”

***

The Walker stopped short of the town, camping well north of the highway. No fires were lit, a tent raised as the Elders met with the survivors from Taner’s band. The foragers trickled back in threes and fours, all from the north of the road—even if they didn’t respect the hunters, they weren’t fool enough to wander into territory where enemies had been spotted.

Peda sat with the other hunters, running her knife on a stone. Adal sat with her, hunters clustered around, counting the returning foragers, but none raised their voices above a murmur.

“There’s good odds,” Adal said, and a few of them looked to her, “the two in the basin were trailing them, to lead them to more of us.”

Peda nodded. Beside her, Fen held their child.

“What’re we gonna do about it?” one of Gabrel’s hunters asked.

“ _Give_ them more of us. More than they can handle.” Peda tested the edge of her knife on her thumb. “Honey, are there any foragers who would assist us?”

“A handful,” Fen said, watching Ayla chew a knotted rag. “I can ask around. No pressure on them, but I don’t want to send you off without backup.”

“I’d appreciate it,” Peda said, traded a kiss as she sheathed her knife and took the baby. “Any of you with apprentices, I’ll put the same question to you. Don’t bring them if they don’t want. Don’t bring them if they can’t fight. These Legion men want war, we’ll give them war, and that means no weak links.”

A few of them nodded, standing. Adal followed, looking at the group. One of them caught her eye, a young man with a bruised face, and the older man beside him stood.

Adal steeled herself, but met him halfway, arms folded. “Dane, out of Sel and Gare. Jon’s father,” he said, by way of introduction.

“Adal, out of Jia and Ouray. Ches’s ma.” She nodded to his son, and all his bruises. “Sorry that happened, but I feel there’s blame on both sides.”

He frowned, but said, “I talked with your senior hunter.”

Adal tipped her head. “Not Jeth?”

“He’s a cousin, unfortunately. I’m a little tired of his opinions by now.” Dane shrugged. “Peda said your boy’s had some rough going lately.”

Adal snorted. “He hasn’t made anything easier on Ches,” she said. “He’s a good kid, and he’s working it out. Didn’t hurt yours too bad?”

“Mostly his pride,” he said, with a wry look. “Didn’t realize how young your boy was.”

“Yeah, _that_ makes it all fine,” Adal said, unsmiling.

“Jon…has a lot of growing up to do yet.” Dane sighed, looking aside. “He got a talking-to. I promise—both of us do—that this won’t be a problem again.”

She kept her arms folded, face steady. “See to it.”

He had the grace to look uncomfortable, and finally said, “Says your Ches hit like a kicking brahmin. He’ll be a hell of a fighter when he gets his growth in.”

Adal’s mouth quirked, and she let her face soften. “His da was, too. Might wind up taller at this rate, though.” She leaned over, looking at his son. “Coyote hide?”

“Some sort of mutant dog,” he said, turning to him. “Pack of them running near a missile crater, must have spent generations by it. A hunt that found us, honestly, but he proved himself in it.”

“Good hunting, then. Not everyone walks away from a fight like that,” she said. Adal held out a hand. “Sorry for the trouble. We’d be happy to have your help, in all this mess.”

“Our apologies, as well,” he said, taking it. “We’re all Walker, in this. We can’t stand aside and let you fight this alone.”

They traded a nod, and Adal moved on, picking Ches out on the edge of the group. He had pushed back his scarf, running a hand over his scalp, saying something quiet. Wilm sat beside him, hood down. His hair was long enough to tie, but styled in dense cords, woven back on themselves. “No, my ma adopted in,” Wilm said, pulling one of the locks free, a bone ring worked into it. “I’m born Walker, raised Walker, but she raised me Twisted Hairs, too. I’m a whole _me_ , not a _half_ anything. Nor are you, kid.”

Ches sat back, frown fading as he thought. Adal hesitated, almost turning back to give them space, but Wilm caught sight of her. He gestured her closer, and she crouched beside the two of them. “How goes it?”

“Okay,” Ches said, lost in thought.

“Doing well, hunter,” Wilm said. “Peda getting on her way?”

“Shortly. She wanted us to confirm everyone who’s going, down to the apprentices,” she said.

“I’ll give you a moment, then,” he said, standing. Before he left, she caught his eye, gave a subtle nod at Ches and him a grateful smile. Wilm returned it and raised a hand, _my pleasure_.

“Sii Wilm, I—oh,” Ches came back to the moment, looking after him, crestfallen. “Did I…”

“You’re fine, dearling,” Adal said. “Peda wanted him. I bet he’d be happy to talk with you more tomorrow.”

“Okay,” he said, gears still turning in his head. “Is something happening?”

Adal took a breath. “We’re going hunting. The Taner people said the Bull men had a large camp on the river. We’re going to go rescue any Walker there.”

Ches lifted his head, shaking off whatever thought had hold of him. “We are? I mean…” He had found his spear again, pulled it across his lap. “We’re going to go kill people.”

“Yes. You did for one of them, and it was quick and clean. Be proud of that,” she said as he looked away. “But it’s not an easy thing. It shouldn’t be. So I’m gonna ask if you really want to come. If you can kill more of these men without hesitating, without putting you or any other hunters at risk. Because if you think you’ll have a _single second thought_ out there, I want you to stay here, with the folk guarding the camp. That’s just as useful to us, and nobody’s gonna call you coward for it.”

He bit his lip, thinking. Adal sat back on her heels, waited, resisted the urge to hurry him as more of the hunters around them drifted towards Peda’s voice.

Finally, he stood. “I’ll go with. If there’s people that need our help, I want to get them out. That’s what’s important.”

“Good boy,” she said, standing with him. She reached to fuss with his hair, feigned shock that there was nothing for her to tuck away. Ches laughed, pulling his scarf down tight as they joined the others.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for the chapter for violence and some medical/injury related trauma

The camp was visible on the horizon, the light from it a soft glow in the emptiness of the basin. The hills gave way to flat around it, lit by a ring of floodlights, the thrum of a generator audible from the hills.

The Walker broke up to move in twos and threes, more than a dozen hunters with a mix of weapons. They crept over the exposed ground, each group covering another as they advanced, the ones on the front line finding shelter before gesturing to the ones behind. The whole group came to a tense halt as they neared the lit area, and Adal gritted her teeth as the front rank pulled down a pair of guards, dragging the bodies into a shallow ditch. The lead group waved them down, taking position in the narrow stream beds, letting them hook around and surround the camp, skirting the pool of light.

Adal’s team moved up, flanked by two others. Sen was on Adal’s right hand, still learning his gun, and Ches a step behind, watching their backs. 

Sen hissed under his breath, and Adal followed his hand. A pair of Legion men were patrolling, and the Walker in sight stopped, dropping against the dirt or behind weeds. Sheltered by a stunted pine, Adal caught Eng’s eye, down in a wash. He leveled his own rifle, a low-powered thing, but with the extra mass of a night scope and suppressor.

A blunt _thap!_ and one of the guards fell. The other started, turning to watch him go down as he drew a knife, and he never saw Adal close the gap. Sweeping his legs out from under him, she bore him down, dragging him into the dark, muffling the gurgle of a slit throat with her own body.

She stayed down a long moment. No outcry from the camp, and no more sentries came to investigate. She gestured to the others in hiding, moving at a crouch to the far side of the encampment. Another pair of guards were patrolling, but the Walker were far enough back for them to pass by, unaware.

Sen scooted up, kneeling behind a boulder with her. Adal glanced back as she readied her rifle, waved at Ches to watch their backs, chin-deep in a wash. He nodded, face set, spear propped in easy reach.

The Walker waited.

The guards changed course, homing in on the fallen pair. The crack of Peda’s rifle sent the head of one snapping back, gore spraying. The rest of the Walker opened fire, picking off the floodlights and covering the spearmen as they charged the camp. The Legion scrambled to respond, a handful awake, more of them trying to orient themselves in the dark. Adal ducked, chips struck off the boulder she sheltered behind, and the Legion shooter behind a crate did the same as she returned fire. He turned, one of the Walker skirmishers closing in, and Adal sank a round in his shoulder, his chest as he tried to defend.

The light from within the camp grew brighter, and Adal made it two steps closer before she heard Peda and Wilm calling, “Hold fire! Hold fire!”

She dropped to a knee, pressing up against a scrub-pine and sighting on the Legionary stepping into the floodlights. She growled, lowering her gun at the sight of the figure with him. The woman stumbled as he pushed her along, her body between him and the hunters, a gun pressed to the back of her head.

“Surrender, or we start killing slaves,” the man called, all too calm.

Their spearmen froze, exposed, uncertain. From cover, Adal heard the riflemen whisper, muttering for orders.

“Dirty win, Legion man,” Peda called out of the dark. “Wouldn’t pull that unless you’d already lost.”

“So be it.” He steadied his grip, and the slave closed her eyes.

Adal fired a wild shot, too far from him, for fear of hitting her—

He didn’t flinch.

Voss, nearest him, screamed and charged as she fell. The Legionary drew on him coolly, three rounds taking him full in the chest.

Chaos broke out, the Walker abandoning cover for a last, panicked rush on the camp. Adal caught a flash of something arcing overhead, clattering to the earth behind her. She barely had time to throw herself into a low hollow, hands over her ears before the grenade went off. She surged back up, shouting, voice flat and faint in her own ears. “Ches? _Ches?_ ”

He leaned out from behind the boulder, face drawn. His mouth moved as though speaking, but she couldn’t hear, and she dropped flat as he raised his revolver. Rolling, she saw a Legionary fall to his knees, momentum dropping him almost at her feet. She didn’t acknowledge as she rushed back up, clearing the last few yards to the camp, hunkering behind the same crate that had been used as cover against her.

A man was facing a cage, people cowering away from him. He staggered at the first round, lobbing something underhand into the crowd. He crumpled as another shot found his chest, another hunter, and the ones in the cage started to scream, panic, some climbing the walls, others rushing for the exit, one man throwing himself to the ground.

Looking on, helpless, she was brought back to the moment by a bullet tearing through the meat of her shoulder, and she bit back a scream as she returned fire.

She didn’t see the grenade go off, just heard the blast, a wet _smack_ , the screaming still muffled in her ears.

The shooting slowed, stopped. The Walker called to each other, counting dead, wounded, shouting back to the foragers and their healing supplies. Adal stood, taking in the camp, not wanting to look at the captives. They had thrown a tent on a fire for light, wood poles helping the canvas to catch. It colored the scene in oranges and reds, oily smoke twisting into the air and stinging her eyes.

The others were rushing to the slave pen, checking over the ones on the ground, the dead and bleeding, the survivors pressing back, away from them. Adal clamped a rag over her shoulder as she approached the river bank, the poles there, each with a crossbar near the top. She passed the first body, starting to rot, birds already taken its eyes and lips. The second was fresh enough, she paused, but moved on. The third was in Walker clothes yet, a young man with his hood gone, but unmistakable. His eyes were open, just barely, breathing feebly.

“Sen?” she called. Looking back, she saw him staring at one of the slaves, legs little but pulp below his knees, the puddle of blood under him gently trickling toward the river. “Sen!” He shook it off, taking a step in her direction. “Give me a boost, this one’s still alive!”

His head snapped up, and he skidded to a halt beside her. Sen linked his fingers together, giving her a step up as she cut the ropes on his arms, legs. Her arm struggled to raise as she worked, and the man fell hard against her, Sen nearly dropping both of them as she stepped down. The man groaned, coughing, whimpering as she lay him down. “Get a forager,” she said, holding her canteen to his lips.

Adal looked out at the Legion camp, the fire dying down, some of the hunters turning the remaining floodlights to face the wounded. The slaves, injured and not, shrank from the light, uncertain, fearful. The foragers were already kneeling beside the wounded, holding pressure as they bled, calling to each other for medicines. Some had begun to lay out the bodies, folding knives into the hands of the dead. The rest ransacked the Bull-men’s stores, pulling open crates and lockers for anything of use.

And at the entrance to the camp stood Ches, mouth open in horror, looking on at the dead, the dying, the blood…

Sen approached, a forager following. She handed the crucified man off to him, holding her arms out to shoo Ches back. “No, come on. Baby, don’t look, don’t—”

He put his hands to his face, backing away. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” She held him close, hiding his face against her chest. She could barely whisper, “I never should have asked you to come. I’m so sorry…”

Ches pushed away, and she stroked at his hair, looked him up and down for harm. “They killed Voss,” he said, voice choked. “And Eng, and, and another hunter, a Gabrel that I didn’t even—”

“Shh, shh.” He stepped out of her grip, wiping at his eyes, leaving her to do the same. “Ches, I’m sorry.”

He staggered away, looked almost ready to drop. Adal let him stand and breathe, hands pressed to his face. “You’re hurt, ma.”

“I know,” she said. Blood was flowing again from her arm, and she used her teeth to set the bandage tighter. “I’ll be alright, but you—”

“Adal?” She was too exhausted to jump as someone tugged on her skirt. Chisa, a forager, looked up at her. “I need you to hold this closed.”

She half-stood, let Adal set her hands on the slave woman’s leg before stepping aside. The woman moaned, trying to writhe away, but Chisa held her down, putting an ear over her heart. Half of her body was peppered with fine wounds, the largest on her leg and chest. “How many…?”

“Don’t know. One of them tried to throw themselves on it,” Chisa said, tearing her patient’s shirt open and all but upending her pack. “Just keep holding that shut. Her lung’s punctured.”

The woman gritted her teeth, whimpering as Adal shifted her grip, favoring her injured arm. “Hey.” Adal rubbed at her good leg with her other hand. “What’s your name?”

The reply was unintelligible, dialect, as she struggled to breathe. Adal shared a look with Chisa, using some sort of paste to stick a square of plastic over the hole in her chest. “Don’t know it. Bassa tribe? Are you Bassa?”

She was fighting to take a breath, only made a sound when Chisa drove a short, wicked knife into her side, between her ribs. “Hold her!” she said as her patient fended her off with an arm, trying to thread some sort of tube into the hole she’d made.

Ches stepped around, taking the woman’s hands. He held her long enough for Chisa to finish, the Bassa woman unable to draw breath to scream. Adal heard a hiss from the tube when she let it go, blood dribbling from the end.

Chisa sat back, wiping her forehead with a clean spot on the back of her arm. “Adal, get her leg tied off. Ches, bring me a bucket of water. We have more to see to.”

They ghosted behind her, holding pressure, rinsing hands, cutting strips for bandages as they worked through the survivors. The worst-off were first, some barely conscious, some with forgers already desperately hovering over them. On to the ones sitting up, watching them, Ches flagging as he ran to the river and back, Adal’s back and shoulders aching at the stooping and holding. The camp quieted, until Chisa finally turned around, sighed, and said, “Come on. Your arm, now.”

Adal nodded and knelt, and Chisa settled beside her, scraping the last of her healing powder out of a pouch. Beyond her shoulder, Voss had been laid out on the line, a surprised expression on his face. Wilm and another of his hunters carried Eng to rest beside him, his rifle still laid on his chest. The hunters looked at it uneasily, to each other, none wanting to trespass.

“I can,” Peda said. Taking an unburnt section of canvas, she used it to pick up the gun, Wilm helping her lift his body to free its sling. She rolled it up in the fabric, slowly, taking care that her hands never made contact with wood or steel.

“Now we give it back to Santi?” Ches asked, latching onto the familiar in the face of it all.

Peda shook her head. “I’m keeping it.” Adal took a breath, heard the others nearby do the same. Peda scowled at them. “Not to _use_ , I have some decency. But tell me Santi’s earned the right to be Elder, after getting us in this mess.”

None of the Walker would meet her eyes. Adal and Chisa shared a look, her arm re-bound.

“I’ve done my hunter’s trial, the same as all of you,” Peda said, turning to the crowd. “Last Walk, I did a forager’s, finding an untouched Old World place. This Walk, I did a mender’s, helped someone make a knife,” she said, with a nod at Ches. “I know every jody, end to end, and I’ve led all my hunters without a second’s wavering.” The others were abandoning the camp, the wounded with someone under an arm, or ready to help them rise. The living looked to her, listening, grim and shaken. “And we’re gonna _need_ more elders who aren’t so hidebound, since men like Santi weren’t picked for being rare. So who’s with me? Not much of an Elder with no band.”

“We are,” Adal said, and Ches nodded beside her.

“We’ll follow you,” one of the foragers said, echoed by another, by the hunters.

“We’ll walk beside you, but still follow Gabrel, for now,” Wilm said, and beside him, his people nodded.

“That’s fair,” Peda said. She looked down at the bodies, of friends, relatives, the captives. All had all been laid out on the line, their enemies left in a pile of Legion colors. “Get the wounded ready to travel. Should take that long to speak for the dead.”

***

The camp was shouting panic as they showed up with the survivors. Fires were lit, the slaves, the strangers, the Walker among the captures calling out faces and names. The crucified Walker man across Adal’s shoulders seemed to have grown heavier as she walked, the bullet wound in her arm deeper, overrunning the bandage. She barely managed to kneel at the edge of camp, a forager helping to lay the man down. He frowned, felt his neck, held his ear over his mouth. The forager shook his head at her, eyes heavy. “I’m sorry. I need to see to the living.”

Adal rolled back to sit on her rear, putting her forehead on her knees as he left. The muscles of her back were twitching with the strain of carrying him, all that way, all for nothing. And she’d have to move him again, to somewhere safe, and the thought alone made her shoulders want to seize—

“He doesn’t have a knife.”

Adal looked up. Ches had arranged his arms on his chest, closed his eyes. “What do we do if he doesn’t have a knife?”

“Find…something.” She reached for him, pulling him away. “Come on, dearling, you don’t have to…”

“I’m getting used to it,” he said, face hard. It broke as she pulled him close, rubbing at his arm as the tears fell. She kissed the top of his head, rested her cheek there as her composure failed, gave in to the strain and the fear and the anger, wept for Eng and Voss, for the nameless man before them, wept for Ches, forced to see it all.

The sky was starting to lighten as the camp quieted. Exhausted, hollow, Ches still leaning on her, Adal watched it with dull eyes. Three figures stood apart from the rest, two old and stooped, the third cradling a long roll of canvas. She was shaking her head, back straight, defiant. There was just enough light to catch the mender’s beadwork on the edge of one, gesturing angrily, Santi trying to force his point. Gabrel’s hands were clasped on the head of her cudgel, motionless.

People were being carried away from the group. Adal squeezed Ches’s arm before she stood, letting him sit back and resettle the scarf on his head. Sen moved like a sleepwalker out of the crowd, looked down at the man she had carried. “There’s a path further uphill,” he said, gesturing. “Thought it would be safer than the highway…”

Adal nodded. They carried him across linked arms, following the others. Three more had died, too injured to bear up after the rush to safety. Numb, she asked Sen as they laid him down, “Do we know who they were?”

“Grace, out of Bea and Nimi. Zall’s cousin,” he said, looking at the woman behind him, dressed in rags with a red X on the front. A mender knelt beside her, folding a knife blank into her hand, her face already covered. “The other two are strangers. Different tribe.”

“And him?” she said, tugging his clothes straighter.

Sen looked at his face, swallowed. “Does anyone…?”

“I think he’s…” Ches hesitated as Adal started, not hearing him follow. “Danel. Han’s big brother. Maybe.”

Adal nodded. “Can you go get his parents, please?”

Someone handed her a square of cloth, and she laid it loosely over his face. His hood was gone, his knife, and his clothes were a mix of salvage and leathers. Maybe a forager, maybe a hunter; young enough for this to have been his first Walk on his own, apart from his parents…

His parents, who didn’t need to see his face to know. Adal stood back as they fell to their knees beside him, silent, grief throttling off their voices in the enormity of it all. Han lingered behind them, uncertain. He turned away, and Ches caught him, inches taller and a year younger, holding his friend as he started to cry.

She looked up as his parents stood. The sheath at his mother’s waist was empty, and a glance showed it in the young man’s hand, a heavy forager’s cleaver.

Adal held out her hands, palm up. His mother took them, and Adal pulled her close. “Frey, I’m so sorry…”

She had to take a breath, squeezed Adal almost tight enough to hurt. “We got to see him, one more time,” she whispered, voice cracking. “Thank you.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, no more tears left to run. “Frey, Mar. This shouldn’t…”

“We would be involved no matter what,” his father said, a hand on her shoulder. “Thank you for bringing him to us, Adal. We just need…”

“Yes.” She bowed her head and headed back downhill.

Ches caught up, leaving Han with his parents. ”What happens now?” he said, rubbing at his eyes.

“I don’t know.” There was a weight in her gut. “You should go get some rest. I don’t know when we’ll get moving again.”

“I’m not tired,” he said, but the last word was almost swallowed by a yawn.

“Liar,” she said, tugging his scarf over his eyes. “Go lay down, even if you can’t sleep. And hey.” She held his shoulder as they stopped, faced him. He pushed his scarf up, the bruise around his eye softer around the edges now, starting to go greenish. “I’m proud of you,” she said, giving him a little shake. “I’ve asked a lot of you lately, and you’ve stepped right up. This whole situation is… _More_ , than I’d ever wanted you to deal with, now or ever.” He was too wrung out to react, just looking up at her steadily. “I wish it all hadn’t been this way. But it is, and you’ve proved you’re tougher than half the adults here.”

He swallowed, looked away. Adal hugged him tight, rubbed at his back, pack left in camp for speed on the hunt. “And I’m _sorry_ you’ve had to go through this. We’ll get to Crossroads, and things’ll get better from there. I promise. That’s all we have to focus on right now, is getting up there safe.”

She felt him nod against her chest, and she held on a moment longer. The family behind them, mourning their oldest boy…

Adal let him go, kissed his forehead. He had just enough energy to screw up his face and wipe at the spot. “Go rest.”

Adal found her pack among the ones that had been left, leaned on it as she sat in earshot of the Elders and Peda, still arguing. _North_ , Gabrel was saying. Northeast, take the harder route through the mountains directly to Crossroads, where they would be more difficult to pursue. _West,_ from Santi, to continue on their planned path, meet with New Canaan and look to trade relations there.

And Peda… “They have more of us,” she said, hoarse from fighting, both the Legion and her Elders. “Taner had almost forty people under him. We saved twenty, and not half of them are ours. And the survivors say there’s other bands they were going to meet, but never showed—Hosh, and Fang, they were both risking the southwest again. Just give me _some_ of our hunters, a handful of menders and foragers. I need people who can scout it, people who can move light and fast, and help get anyone out we find…”

Gabrel said back, “And what do we do without our hunters? We have too many wounded, to send away a single forager…”

Exhaustion overtook her, and Adal drifted off.


	7. Chapter 7

Around midday, a ripple went through the camp. They were moving.

Adal, unable to sleep with the sun so high, watched the rest of the group start to pack up, dousing fires. Her rifle was stripped, the pieces laying on a hide as she cleaned and oiled it. Ches lay in arm’s reach, curled up on his bedroll with a blanket over his head.

The other hunters flocked together in twos and threes, sharing words and breaking up to meet with a different few. Peda was among them, baby Ayla in her sling, and came to crouch next to Adal as she worked. “What’s the word?”

“West,” Peda said, sour. “Damn Santi, but he has a point. We’re looking after these strangers, now. They’ve nowhere else to go.”

“Taking them to Canaan?” Adal said, working the action of her rifle. Something in it still ground, and she dabbed another drop of oil into it as she looked at the crowd. The Walker, out of Taner’s band, had mingled with the rest of the group, leaving the ones from other tribes huddling together in a clump. Most had been given new clothes, or just something to wear over their slave rags—anything spare the tribe had on hand, but they still gave their rescuers wary looks.

Peda nodded. “They’ll look after them, better than we can. And we’re not taking them to Crossroads.”

Adal mimed gagging. “I hate him being right.” Peda almost smiled, fatigue taking the joy out of it. “And we can’t leave the band, not with extra mouths.”

“No,” Peda said, face falling. She looked down, Ayla reaching for the Legion coin she’d worked into her necklace. Her expression softened, and she let her grab her finger in a pudgy hand instead. “Our stores are low, feeding them. I want you to take a group out this evening, Ches, Sen, maybe a couple of Wilm’s people. Enough to bring back some substance, but I want most of our hunters here.”

“In case we’re followed,” Adal said, She worked the corner of a cloth as deeply as she could into the mechanism, trying to winkle the grit out of it. “You want us to go back on our trail?”

Peda chewed a lip, thinking. Ayla let go of her finger, squeaking as she reached again for the necklace. “No. Right now I want your group after food,” she said. “Your discretion the way you go looking. We wiped out a major camp, by what we’ve seen. It ought to slow them down a while. Besides, Wilm is taking some men south, to keep watch as we go. If it looks clear, he might send out another hunting party.”

Adal shrugged. “You’re the boss.”

“Don’t call me that!” Peda said, standing.

“Once you’re Elder,” Adal called after her. Peda waved it off, not turning.

Adal capped off the bottle of oil, wiped her hand as clean as she could before reaching for Ches. “Wake up, dearling,” she said, shaking his arm. He started, grabbing for his spear. “It’s just me, Ches, you’re okay.”

“Oh.” He sat up, pulling the blanket off his head. “Are we going?” he asked, wiping sleep out of his eyes.

“Soon,” she said, looking around for where she’d set her screwdriver. “Talked to Peda, and we got extra mouths to feed now. Foragers won’t leave the group, with so many patients, so she okayed a handful of us to go out this evening.”

“Just like a normal hunt?” Ches asked.

“Just like a normal hunt,” Adal said, fitting the receiver back into the stock. “Scout a little, too, but mostly we’d be after game. You up for it?”

He held his spear across his lap. “Normal sounds good,” he said.

“Thought so too,” she said. Adal stood up, brushing out her skirt, turning on the spot. “You see my screwdriver anywhere?”

They made for a slow-moving bunch, the strangers sticking in the center of the group, moving out of time with the jody. The only easy way across the spring-swollen river was straight through the town, and the bridge there. Adal kept her rifle in hand as they crossed, the townies stepping out of fish-drying sheds to watch them. They slowed to a halt, some of the locals approaching from the far side, and the Walker elders went alone to meet them.

Adal couldn’t help but look south, along the river, past the sheds and out onto the basin. Nothing moved, that she could see, but she tightened her grip on her gun.

Someone poked her on the arm. “Ma?”

She stepped away, eyes snapping to her right—then down. “Hey, kiddo,” she said. “What’s up?”

Alam shrugged, pulled his pack a little higher. “I dunno.”

“You dunno?” she said. “Well, I don’t either, so we can probably figure it out between us.”

“Maybe.”

The group started to move, and he stayed in step with her. “Your da send you?”

He shrugged again. “Nah. I just…” with the wave of a hand.

“I missed you, too.” Adal hugged him sideways. “Whatcha been up to? You doing any projects right now?”

“Yeah!” He pulled open a pouch hanging off the strap of his pack. “Ches had all those gecko claws, right? And so he asked if I could make them into a necklace for him, and I…”

He nearly overflowed with words, and Adal let him run, nodding along and keeping him rolling as he talked about glues and bone and how to spin thread. A few questions got him going on the other menders’ work, the friends he’d made with the kids from the other bands, a dozen other things.

They left the town behind, the highway stretching off into the desert. Ahead of them, she could see Han and Ches walking together. Han gestured to his eye, looking to the ground as he said something low. Scrunching up his face, he held his hands out, wide open. Ches swung a fist at him, knuckles still wrapped up, slow to the point of ridiculousness. He bopped his fist against Han’s cheekbone, and he reeled back, just as slow, hands coming up as he staggered away.

Alam finally stopped talking, possibly just to breathe. He kept time with her, taking a third step for every two of hers, but never losing the group’s rhythm. Still fidgeting with the string of claws, he finally said, “Ches said you won’t Walk with da anymore.”

She took a breath. “Well, I…” He wasn’t quite looking up at her, under his scarf. “No. Probably not.”

He didn’t say anything, just bundled up the claws and tucked them away.

“I’m sorry, Alam. We got a lot to figure out, but…” He grabbed the straps on his pack and sped up as she reached for him, weaving through the band. “Alam, dearling, wait!”

He vanished into the crowd. Adal hung her head and let him go.

The rescued captives dragged even slower through the day, and eventually, one just sat down. He held up his hands, not looking up at the Walker who stopped to check on him. The entire band stalled, watching, and more of the newcomers sat with him, a look of nervous defiance on their faces.

The crowd parted for the Elders, come to look at the holdup. “Get them moving,” Peda said, reaching for the first man. “We’re too exposed here.”

He pulled away, and some of the other tribals stepped towards her—unarmed, but fists clenched. All of them froze.

“Just hold on.” Jun, a mender, crouched next to them. “Bassa? _Kaan Bassa?_ ”

“We don’t need this right now,” Peda muttered, looking south.

“Patience, hunter,” Gabrel said, leaning on her cudgel. With a sidelong look at Santi, “We should have taken time for this earlier.”

“If they will not move, we will not carry them,” Santi said. “We did not ask for their burden, given them food from our hand and clothes from our backs. If they are ungrateful, they will remain here.”

The Walker nearest him took a step back. “How have you not dropped dead, of the rot inside you?” Peda snapped. “We saved them once. People _died_ for them to get out alive. And if we’re _keeping_ them alive, that means _moving_.”

“Hunter, mind your—” Santi said.

“I’ll mind—” Peda bit it back, Fen laying a hand on her arm.

“Let your mender work her magic, hunter,” Gabrel said.

Santi scowled. “I won’t be interrupted. I—”

“Do you hear something?” Gabrel said, looking over her shoulder.

Jun had the man nodding along reluctantly. He pointed to one of the women in slave rags, and Jun went to her, said something in yet another language.

“Cousin, this is childish—”

“Think it’s just the wind,” a forager said.

“Someone passing wind,” some wit in the crowd added.

Santi went beet red. “I am your Elder!”

“What do you say, Elder Gabrel?” Harris said. “Should we pick a nice slow jody to carry them to?”

Shaking mad, Santi headed for the front of the group. Gabrel smiled—too old and wise for it to be vindictive, surely—and followed.

“Some of them are still in bad shape,” Adal muttered. Peda turned a look on her, but she didn’t flinch. “I can carry one myself. We’d hardly move slower than with them afoot.”

“The Taner said the Legion marched them hard,” Fen said. “We might not look so different to them.”

“We’re nothing alike,” Peda said, but quieter.

“They’re strangers. They don’t know that.”

Adal left her to cool off, Fen stroking her hand. Ches was talking to one of the Taner boys, Han beside him. “Got a task for you, kiddo,” she said, pulling off her pack. “Feeling strong?”

She helped him settle her pack on his back, drawing the straps up tight, hanging smaller pouches off the front to balance the load. He passed his own pack off to Han, who hung it backwards off his chest. “Switch off, if you get too tired,” she said, heading back to the tribals. Most were standing now, some of the Walker approaching with their packs handed off. 

“Come on, hey? I don’t bite.” Mear was crouched down, cajoling a sitting woman, traces of Bassa face paint still around her eyes, a bandage on her leg. Another woman held her hand, a second almost ready to drag her away as they shrank back into the bunch. Smiling, he held out a hand. “Just want to help. Don’t worry about—”

“Hell, Mear, knock it off,” she said, swatting him on the arm. “Legion’s all men.” He looked up, confused, then embarrassed, bowing deeply to the Bassa before leaving. She shooed him away, then held out a hand to the woman, the other on her chest. “My name is Adal,” she said, in English.

The Bassa looked to her companions, realized she was the one being addressed. She put a hand to her chest, said, “Vela.”

“Vela,” Adal said, smiled, turned her back and patted her shoulder. “Climb up?”

“…Es.” She said something to the other women, who helped her stand and limp closer. “ _Hyu aam…_ ” She gestured to her leg.

“Yes,” Adal said, then, “Es.”

Vela smiled, faintly. “ _T’ankyu_ ”

The band continued with slightly more speed, wounded and exhausted strangers held on backs or across shoulders. Gabrel called cadence, and everyone with the breath for it threw in, giving voice to the story of Ancient Chien and the first Crossroads.

She had to convince Vela to take a better grip on her shoulders, the woman almost too scared to touch her. She was light, and not tall, about as easy a burden as she could hope for in an adult. She relaxed as they went, and Adal found breath to try and talk, sharing words in their own languages. Ches walked beside them a while, after trading packs with Han. Haltingly, Vela thanked him as well, and Ches mumbled, “We had to help.”

Han elbowed him, and he flushed.

It was nearing sunset by the time they found somewhere the Elders approved of, a highway overpass with a commanding view of the basin. Someone had tried to shelter there before, not unlike Joe’s Junction, old sheds and lean-tos built under the road. The hunters made their way to the upper bridge, and the rest of the tribe took shelter below.

“We sure we wanna stay on the road?” Adal said, helping Vela step down.

“Show me a more defensible spot, not that my opinion matters,” Peda muttered.

“Dear,” Fen said.

She took a deep breath. “If there’s any Legion left out here, I doubt they’re terribly coordinated,” Peda said. “Take your bunch and get going. I’d still like you back while there’s light.”

“You got it—” Peda gave her a warning look. “Senior hunter,” Adal finished.

Peda rolled her eyes. “Voss, can…?” She trailed off, and the others nearby looked away. Peda rubbed at her face and lowered her voice. “Mear, Cala, grab some people and move these vehicles into a barricade.” 

Wilm’s group rejoined them, having spent the day shadowing them to the south. “No sign of anything,” Adal heard him say to Peda, taking her pack back from Ches. “Must have left them behind, further east.”

“We better have,” Peda said, then jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “Adal’s headed out. Got any people for her?”

“A couple who aren’t too exhausted to walk,” Wilm said. Looking past her, he called, “Going hunting too, scrapper?”

Ches straightened, still trying to wriggle his pack back on. “Yes, sii Wilm.”

“Bring us back something good, and look after your ma, hey?”

“I will!” Flustered at the attention and still fighting a twisted strap, he dropped his spear.

Wilm shot her a grin, and Adal had her hand over her mouth as she reached to pick it up. “Sounds like you’re in charge of this one, Ches. What do you think? Northeast is hilly enough for bighorner, northwest is flat enough for smaller game.”

He was still blushing as he looked out at the landscape, and said, “Where do night stalker den? In caves, right?”

Tired as she was, she couldn’t help but grin. “Right on.”

“The hills,” he said, firm. “And, um…Can Han come? I thought…”

She looked to him. He watched his parents, standing together, looking like husks of their old selves. “Yeah, of course. So long as it’s fine by his folks.”

“We already asked,” he said, punching Han on the arm. He turned back to them, jarred out of reverie. “I bet we’ll see a night stalker today, and I’ll see it first.”

She let them trail behind, weaving through the crowd. Sen was lowering a man with a tattooed face to his feet, a forager there to take his weight. As she helped him limp off under the bridge, she tapped Sen on the shoulder. “Wanna go bag a bighorner and pretend this last week never happened?”

“Do I get to sleep after?” he said.

“Mmm…” She put a finger to her lips, squinting at the sun. “Half a night.”

“You’re my favorite cousin,” Sen said, rolling his shoulders and pulling on his pack. “Let me sit a minute, that Two Cedar man weighed as _much_ as two cedars.”

“Ah, ya wimp.” she said, scuffing dirt at him. “Some Walker, can’t carry a stranger all day after a run all night. And he wasn’t Two Cedar.”

“How would you know?” Sen said, stretching a leg. “Didn’t speak anything I knew. Kept telling me he was either embarrassed or pregnant about being carried.”

Behind her, Ches snorted, and Han laughed. “Maybe,” Adal said. ”But those tattoos…I _know_ that’s not Two Cedar. Can’t put my finger on it, though.”

“Well, lemme know,” he said, straightening. “We headed out?”

***

Three of Wilm’s people joined them, two with spears and one with a rifle. As they hiked up into the hills, Adal caught Sen making eyes at the riflewoman, and her shooting the odd shy glance his way. She elbowed him and said, a little too loudly, “You started carving that thing yet?”

“Oh, I. Uh.” Sen pulled the strap over his head, holding up the stock. The outline of a bull had been burned into it with a piece of hot wire. “Yeah. I figured that’d be a place to start.”

“Sen’s gun,” she said. “I know you took it off a Legion warrior, but not how.”

Wilm’s people listened in as he stumbled through it, the woman stepping a little closer to hear. He paused to pull up his hood and hide his blush, and Adal grinned, moving a little faster to catch up with the boys. “Seen anything yet?”

“Hoof tracks. Bighorner droppings,” Ches said, watching the ground. “We’re going the right way?”

“Uphill? Yeah.” Han had gotten ahead of them as they walked, and the other hunters lagged back, talking. Adal gave Ches a nudge. “How you doing?”

“Okay,” he said, eyes on the path.

“Convincing.”

He glanced up at her, away. “I’m sorry I told Alam.”

“No, he would’ve…would’ve learned eventually. I just don’t know what to say to him,” she said. There was doubt in his eyes, and she cleared her throat. “But don’t worry about it. Jeth and I will work it out.”

“Loudly,” he muttered, then hid behind his scarf.

“Maybe so,” she said, voice even. “But either way, it’ll be you and me again, kiddo. How should we celebrate?”

“I, um.” He kicked at the grass a little as they walked. “Do we…Is Circle Junction hard to get to?”

“Well…” Adal took a breath. “It’s not. It’s on the highways. But the last few Crossroads, there’ve been bands that went that far south, and not come back.”

“Is that because of the Legion?”

“Maybe. But that makes about ten years they…” She shook her head. “It’s not a bad guess. But I don’t know, not for sure.”

He was frowning, eyes on the ground. “If the Legion kill people, and my da’s where they are…”

“Hey.” She put an arm around his shoulders. “Don’t think like that. They’ve been leaving townies alone, remember?” Though reluctant, he nodded. She rubbed at his arm. “Only way to know for sure is to go there, you and me.”

“You think it’s safe?” he said, looking up.

Adal chewed the inside of her lip. “I think there’s a lot of places that’re dangerous, now. I don’t think it could be any worse than here,” she said, giving his shoulder a squeeze. “If you wanna try and find him, I’m at your back, kiddo, to the end of that road.”

He managed a smile from somewhere, and Adal tried to return it. How old he seemed now, how serious…

The mesas ahead were low, tired things, but the sky was already shading gold as they reached the top of the second, bighorner tracks evident in the dirt. They topped the hill as quietly as they could, moving in two groups, staying on the lee side of the mesa. The bighorner had clustered much as the Walker had, taking vantage on the highest point, some of the ewes already bedded down for the evening.

“Desert bighorner,” Adal said. Beside her, Ches nodded sagely. “They’re not as big as the mountain ones. Two, do you think, Cari?”

“I’d say two,” he said, peering out on her other side

She nodded to the other group. “Think Sen has a chance?”

He glanced over at them, grinning. “Medha’s been pacing him since Joe’s Junction.”

“They what?” Ches squinted at them.

“Never mind,” she said. Adal dropped lower on the slope, and the others came alert, watching her. She held up a fist with one finger raised, a second time with two, and made a shooing motion. Sen repeated the gestures back, and she nodded. Both hunting parties stayed below the crest of the hill, taking position further from one another.

Adal, the only one in her group with a rifle, settled on the edge of the mesa, sighting on a bull. It pulled up a bit of scrub, idle, unaware of them, and she breathed evenly as she waited for it to shift broadside. On the far quarter of the mesa top, she saw one of the others doing the same, out of the other group’s line of fire. Probably Sen, trying to impress, and she fought down a grin.

The bull shifted. Adal took a breath in, let it out until her chest was empty, and sank a round behind its shoulder.

The rest of the heard bleated at the sound, heads coming up, trying to see the threat. Another shot, and a second, smaller bull staggered, tried to run. A third, and it was down.

Smelling the blood, the rest of the herd stampeded from the far side of the mesa, heads up as the Walker approached the kill. Two to a carcass, they dragged them further away, the others with weapons at the ready in case the herd turned on them. “Good hunt,” Adal said. “Clean. Which of you…?”

“Well, I took the first shot, and—” Sen started.

“Both of us took a—” Medha said, at the same time. Flustered, she leaned down and got a better grip on a hoof.

Adal stuck her tongue out at Sen, grinning, and he looked ready to catch fire.

The bighorners kept their distance, a few laying down again, and the hunters set to work dressing the animals. Easy work, familiar work, with enough hands to make it light. “Anybody needing guts for anything? Or know a mender who does?”

“Nah, just leave the hollow stuff,” one of Wilm’s said.

Cutting the innards free, Adal reached into the carcass. “See here, Ches? Good white fat, all around the kidneys. Get that rendered down, and it’ll keep for months without going rancid.”

She handed him a piece, and he turned it over to examine the color and texture. “It does look nice.”

“Glad you like it, you’re carrying it. Got your tarp?” Her hand was bloody to the elbow from the butchering, and something in it made her world lurch, the smell of smoke in the air again, the dark, the wounded…

“Ma?”

“I’m fine,” she said, resting an elbow on the carcass. Wiping her hand on the hair, she reached for her canteen.

“Hog-Up!” Sen shouted, making her jump. He pointed the handle of his knife at her, kneeling alongside the other bighorner. “I bet he was Hog-Up, that man I carried, with the tattoos.”

“Oh, eh,” she said, sitting back. She could still smell smoke. “He might have been. They’re further west though, all the way on the far side of Salt Lake.”

“No, I’m sure of it,” he said. “Hog-Up. I’ll bet you anything.”

“He’d be a hell of a long way out of their territory,” Cari said. “Way too far east.”

“Yeah, why’d he be... “Adal felt a chill. “Leave the meat.”

“What? We just—”

She looked back towards the road. A wisp of smoke was rising over the far hill. “Leave it,” she said, skidding downhill. “Leave it and _run!_ ”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for **violence and hard noncon this chapter.** "Make an example of her first" is your cue for the squeamish to skip to the next chapter. All subsequent chapters will reference it to some degree.

Adal’s heart was in her throat as she ran, each footfall taking hours to land, each one with a name. Alam. Fen, Peda. Mear, Cala, Harris…

She hit the bottom of the slope hard, foot sliding out from under her and sending her tumbling. The others caught up, chivvying her on, and Ches even grabbed her hand to drag her up. She ached as she ran, a stitch in her side, each step sending a jolt through her. Gabrel, Wilm, Chisa, Jun…

She caught a glimpse of the fires as they rounded the further mesa, the overpass camp torn apart, dark figures swarming over it like ants. Adal pushed through her pain to take them behind a low ridge, shielding them from the flat leading up to the camp—their own foresight come round to bite them. Adal staggered to a halt, hands on her knees. Lagging behind the adults, Ches turned back to help Han rise, fallen to his knees and starting to retch from exertion.

“Sen. With me. We’ll cross. Gotta be a way in,” she panted. Pressing the pain out of her side, she tried to stand straight. “Which of you’s senior? Medha? Take your two on this side of the road. Go in however you see a way, close as you can. I'll scout it, see if we can start quiet, then draw them out of the camp.” Ches was helping his friend to stand, Han still spitting and wiping his mouth. “You two, stay put. Don’t get into this.”

“I’m coming with you, ma,” Ches said, still starving for air.

“You are _not_ , boy.” He flinched at the tone of her voice. “No argument. You _stay_.”

He scowled at the ground, but said, “Yes, ma.”

“Sen?” Adal said, checking over her rifle. He did the same and nodded, the two of them dropping low to slink across the highway. Greasy smoke rose from the old shacks, the hulls of the vehicles; the orange evening sun couldn’t cut through it, leaving the crossroads shadowed and dark. The red-and-black figures moved through it slow, confident, clumps of people in salvage and hoods drawing away as they went. More lay on the pavement, in washes of blood turned sticky and black in the light.

One of the Legion soldiers paced up the side-road, not far from them. Adal flattened herself behind a rock, glanced back for Sen. She hissed under her breath, surging up to grab him by the arm and drag him down with her. He fell on his side, not bothering to catch himself, hands pressed to his face, looking ready to vomit. “Sen.” Adal put a hand to his head, made him look up. “Sen. We have to do something. We have to fight them.”

He shook his head, hiding his face. “Cala,” he whispered. “Harris. Dead. There, in the dirt…”

“But the rest are alive!” she hissed. _”They_ still need our help!”

“No, no…” he moaned, shaking his head, tears on his face.

She slapped him hard. “Do you want to _watch?”_ she said, and he cringed. She pushed his rifle at his chest. “I’m going to help them. I don’t care if you—”

“Hold there,” said a voice behind them, the words clipped and sharp.

The sentry had his rifle trained on them, gesturing. Adal started to raise her hands, not touching her gun. The stranger came closer, sweeping the barrel of his weapon at the highway, towards the others. “Move,” he said, the word intelligible, but accented. “Go to the other captures.”

“Move?” she asked, and he repeated, gesturing again and frowning. “Yes. I’ll move.” She shifted her weight to stand, and turned it into a lunge, punching him hard in the gut. He folded, and she grabbed his head, bashing his face on her knee. He fell, and she followed him down, clamping a hand over his mouth and drawing her knife over his throat. She held him there, muffling the gurgling, waiting for him to stop struggling. Head up, none of the Legion in the camp seemed to notice, facing the group of unarmed Walker, weapons in hand.

She dragged the body back to hiding, checked a pouch that clinked at his belt. Glancing inside, she passed it to Sen. He took it, hand shaking, and Adal glanced across the road.

Behind an overturned vehicle, Medha shook her head, rifle shouldered. Adal lifted a closed fist, _wait_. “We’ve got no cover, and we’re outnumbered,” she said. Beside her, Sen found his feet, tucking the stranger’s magazines into easy reach in a pocket. “Medha’s holed up. I want her spears and I to be bait. You and her pick off the ones coming after us.”

He looked up, tears still running free. “That’s suicide. You’re better with your gun…”

“If it’s suicide, I can’t ask them to do it _for_ me.”

“You have children. It should be me who…”

“We’re all dead if we don’t act.” Catching Medha’s eye, she ran through a quick set of gestures, _gunners stay, covering fire, spears move up, decoy._ Medha hesitated, but gave her a thumbs up before turning to her hunters. “Ready?”

“No,” Sen said, but leaned on the boulder, steadying his aim.

Adal stood. Only a handful of the Legion were even bothering to keep watch, the hunters in camp dead or captured. Her first shot took one with his back turned, an easy pick off the highway bridge. The rest came alert as she started to run, firing again, the shot going wide but bringing their gaze to her. “On me!” she screamed, the two hunters breaking cover to follow. “Walker, on me!”

Some of the Legion rushed from the camp, heavy knives flashing. Adal kept her eyes up, picking off the gunners on the road, snarling as they stepped back, forcing Walker captives into her line of fire. She kept moving, a low hillock beside the road providing some cover as the Legion skirmishers closed with the hunters. Cari struck first, spear giving him range on the Legions’ machetes, but the man tore it free from his side and kept advancing.

She took the one over his shoulder, Cari with his knife drawn, too close for her to risk a shot. At a scream, she raised her head, saw three of them descend on Medha’s blind, taking down one of them, two as Sen broke cover to—

Pain exploded in her side, a force like being kicked by a brahmin. She spun, the man in red behind her leveling his gun for a final shot, sighting on her head rather than catching the blow on her pack. Adal ducked as he fired, crouched as she drew her knife and rushed him. He took the first slash on the arm instead of the face, used the backswing to slam the butt of his shotgun into her chest and send her sprawling. Her rifle fell out of reach, and she rolled up, slicing at his legs. He danced back, and she lunged again, the knife sinking through the thin leather of his armor and into his belly. She grabbed the shotgun and left him writhing, turning to face the others, circled around the hillock.

She fired the shotgun at her attacker, the kick of it unfamiliar, and scrambled to figure out how to cycle it. There was a lever under the stock like her own rifle, and she worked it frantically, staggering as a shot took her in the leg. She bit down on the pain and sighted on the next Legion man to try and approach. Behind her, she heard one of the Gabrel hunters cry out, cut short, the other screaming fear or pain.

She managed to score one kill with the shotgun, another with the knife when one of the men charged, reckless. Another lined up a shot behind him, beyond her reach, and she dodged back around the hill, rounds from the ones on the bridge kicking up dirt beside her. One found her shoulder, her side, and no more cover came from Sen and Medha; Cari and his friend lay at her feet. She tried to run, use one of the vehicles on the road for shelter, but she fell to her knees as a round bit high in her leg. Adal made herself stand, in time for something to snap her head aside, leaving her reeling, staring up at the sky, a dark, looming figure—

“Leave her alone!” a shrill voice shouted.

“Ches.” There wasn’t enough air in the world. The figure reached down, and she waited until his hand was closed on the neck of her hood before she surged up, stabbed her knife side-on into his neck, tore forward in one brutal rush. “Ches!” she screamed, rolling to her feet. “Run! Get out of here!”

He had her rifle on his shoulder, far too large and heavy. He fired wildly, the recoil nearly throwing it from his hands. One of the Legion men was laughing as he struggled with the stiff lever, walking up to him calmly. Adal fought to stand, teeth bared, lurching towards him with her knife. “Leave him! Leave him alone! Don’t—”

Ches swung it like a bludgeon, the stock cracking against the Legionary’s head. He fell, and another grabbed him, pressing the muzzle of his gun to his temple. “Stop, woman,” he said. “Or the boy dies.”

Adal froze, swaying. One of the men grabbed her, twisting her arm behind her back and holding her own knife to her throat. “Take them to the road,” he said, voice cold.

They tore her pack from her, rough hands searching for more weapons. Adal gritted her teeth, offered no resistance. She looked up at him once, saw him shaking, fists clenched as he tried not to cry, knuckles bleeding freely. Couldn’t meet his eyes, could feel the muzzle of the gun as though it were pressed to her own head.

They marched her back towards the crossroad, up onto the bridge, past the burnt-out vehicles and fading smoke from the fires. The men on either side of her stopped her on the edge of it, two more going past with Ches and Han, ordering them into the group of children. She watched Ches push through the bunch, only stopping when he gathered up a smaller, darker haired figure.

Adal looked over the survivors, counting names, faces. Fen and another woman were supporting Peda, her face bruised, jaw hanging broken, trying to quiet her baby. Santi stood in the fore of the men’s group, back straight, fear barely cracking the grim mask of his face. There was a grunt and whimper of pain behind her, and she turned to see Sen had been dragged behind, leg broken and bleeding, but clinging to life.

One of the men holding her struck her for looking. She bared her teeth and tried to break free, but the other dug a thumb into the wound on her shoulder, a burst of pain forcing her to her knees. He gave an order to the other in a language she did not know, and moved to the center of the road, taking her knife from her throat. He was no larger than the others, but carried himself like a predator, his helmet feathered with red, white and black. He considered her knife a moment, face hidden under goggles and a wrap, then tucked it into his belt.

“You see now your error in challenging the Legion,” he said, coolly looking over the carnage. “No one stands against us, and none escape us, not even the most pitiful tribe.” Adal heard a scraping sound from further down the road, growing slowly louder. “But take heart, men. You have been given a chance to cast off this savage life to be part of something greater.”

“None leave the Walk willingly,” Santi said, steel in his voice. “And no Walker will bow to slavers and murderers.”

The commander began to stroll casually through the assembly. “Very well. Then you shall be the first to be crucified, elder.” He gestured to the Walker. “Look to him, and mark well. Caesar’s Legion tolerates no disobedience; not from its soldiers, its slaves, or its women.” The scraping sound was louder, and the crowd parted to show several Walker men shadowed by Legion, dragging the crossed poles that lined the highways. Her heart leapt to see Jeth among them, but he was staring unseeing at the ground. “We achieve peace through this order. We will teach it, and you will learn, or die.”

The plumed Legionary had made a full circuit, and stopped in front of Adal. “All have a place. It disgusts me to see one so ignorant of theirs.” He nodded to his men. “I am loath to crucify a woman, but she barely seems one. Make an example of her first.”

Adal fought to stand, heart pounding. The one holding her dragged her off her feet, slamming her against the front of the burned out car. The metal was still hot from the sun, and she flinched away, thrashing. Her shirt had ridden up, his hand fisted in it. She dug her nails into his wrist, trying to loosen his grip, too close to him to kick effectively. Teeth bared, she bucked madly, a knee catching him in the groin and biting down on his arm, twisting to tear flesh.

He swore, letting go. Adal tried to find her feet, shaking from pain and blood loss. She was jerked back by her hood, more hands closing on her body. A third man held her down against the burning metal, and she tried to pull away at their touch. No longer content to hold, a hand slid beneath her shirt, fingers digging into her breast. She spat on him, screaming, swearing. The first of them loomed over her, and she pulled her knees together, cold despite the heat.

He forced a hand between her legs, the other dragging at her skirts as she tried to kick at him. She looked to the rest of the Walker, watching, faces horrified, some still too shocked to grasp, some turned away. “Cowards!” she shouted. “Help me! Fight them! Walker—” Someone struck her on the face, and she felt her teeth cut into her lip. “ _Fuck you,_ I’ll skin you alive for—” Another blow left her head spinning.

The one before her gave up on the skirt, and she felt a knife rake at her waist, not caring if the edge dug into her belly. Exposed, dazed, she tried to twist away, and he laughed, low and cruel and hungry. Adal looked to her kin again, pleading. She saw Jeth, standing slumped next to Santi as the Legionaries lashed him to the cross. He met her eyes, dead and staring. “Please—Jeth—” Her voice broke. “Husband, please, help—”

Jeth shuddered and turned away.

She was screaming again, a senseless tear of rage and profanity. She bucked and thrashed, and the men holding her bore down. A hand closed on her throat, and she tried to snap and bite, a weight settling on her chest. He worked his fingers into her, stretching her wider, the feeling sending a hot thrill through her. Colored sparks ate at her vision, and she couldn’t cry out as he pushed into her, dry and painful. It was wrong, wrong, and she felt tears running from her eyes. A thin whine escaped her, a little rush of sick sensation catching her off guard

His face was wrapped and hidden, but she could smell his breath as he grunted, panting excitement. His hand slipped as he ground into her, and her senses returned, hearing screams and cries somewhere beyond. She screwed her eyes shut—this was a nightmare, somewhere _gone,_ this wasn’t happening. A piercing scream snapped her back to reality, a child—god, oh god, her boys, what if they could—

She fought to ignore the heat between her legs, not wanting it but not able to pull away, confused and revolted at the pleasure in the violation, her struggles growing weaker. She heaved against them, but the grasping hands on her body were too greedy, clutching and feeling. Teeth gritted, she fought the feeling, wanted to vomit, it wasn’t real, she wasn’t _there_. He grunted as he spent himself, sounding like an animal, his last rough thrusts making her whimper and jerk.

One of the men holding her laughed as he withdrew. “Wanted to scream,” he said, still kneading and pinching at her breast. He let go to reach down into her, smearing his fingers with the juices there. “There’s enough of us to make you scream until you want more.” He forced his fingers past her lips, and she fought on reflex. He was watching her, face only half-covered. Eyes on his, she opened her mouth, biting down until her teeth ground on bone.

They threw her down on the road. “We should keep this one, Livius,” the third said. The bitten one kicked her and swore, driving the air out of her. “Been a while since we’ve had one to tame.”

“No. The woman offered resistance, so she will die. There are no exceptions,” the commander said. She climbed to her knees, crawling for her skirt. She fumbled at it, trying to wrap it around herself, not able to draw more than a sobbing breath. A hand closed on the back of her hood, choking her as he hauled on it. “Stand.”

She tried to pull free, her limbs numb and distant. He struck her over the wounds in her back, and pain made her vision dark. Adal didn’t feel them drag her onto the cross, consciousness flickering, catching only glimpses of the Legion and Walker around her. She was sure she had died, hovering above them as they milled below, but was death supposed to hurt so much? There was a scream, and she watched as though from a long ways off as Sen was raised beside her, broken leg unable to take the weight of his body. He screamed until he ran out of breath, sobbing as he tried to draw more.

Her chest and arms burned, her cuts and wounds gnawed at her. She watched, distant and incurious, as the Walker were marched away, under the weapons of the Legion. The children straggled at the back of the group, and she searched for her sons, forcing her eyes to focus. Her boys. Brave Ches, and clever Alam. _Her boys._

She pulled at the ropes on her arms, already burning with strain. They were taking them, her sons, her boys…

The world faded.

Her boys…


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning for gore and noncon references in this chapter

Consciousness came back in fits and starts. She rolled her head, able to see Santi to her left. He looked at her with damnation in his eyes, the hardened Elder gone, a frail old man in his place. Sen sobbed quietly at her other side. Evening drew on, the day cooling more, and insects woke to sip at her wounds, buzzing at the blood and corpses below. Her skin itched with them, and she tried to struggle and shake them free, but the motion made her breathing stop, the world dark until the pain faded.

She stared at the bodies on the ground, naming them. Mear had fallen clutching his wife, a woman from another tribe whose name she never learned. Jun had been gutted, mender’s knife hanging from her fingers. She had never been a hunter, but never been weak.

The men’s breathing grew more labored, then more faint. She tried to call out to them, plead for them to stay awake, not to leave her, but her breath was thin, and her throat was so dry she feared the tissues would break. They faded, in the deep night. Darkness came in waves, waking as animals came to scavenge the fallen, lapsing as they snapped and snarled over the remains of her kin. She tried to cringe, to cover herself, even her hood lost as the Legion bound her to the cross. She could only close her eyes as the fallen Walker looked at her, accusing, standing to point and shame her. Bern, his head caved in, spat at her feet. He had never liked her. Dia, a cousin, shook her head, throat gaping open. Mar could not stand to join them, legs severed, but looked hatred at her.

 _Adal, hunter, fool who led the Bull men here._ She rolled her head to look, breath rasping thin and shallow. Santi hung limp and lifeless, but she heard his voice clearly. _You never listen,_ he said. _You argue with everyone, especially those who know better. Now you hang here, naked and shamed, to die in agony._

She looked to Sen, who could only scream and cry, having died in torment and now spending eternity in it. He cursed her, would haunt her, be there to dog her steps and foul her path. She had done this to him, a cousin, nearer a sibling, led astray. Adal tried to whisper apology, lips cracking to send blood running down her chin.

Darkness. Sound. The wild dogs were driven away by night stalkers, tails buzzing as they paced the crossroads. They reared up to nip at Sen and Santi, but were too high to reach. One came to her, head cocked, tongue flicking at the blood running down the pole.

 _Why did you let them take me?_ it asked, with Ches’s voice. _You told me to fight, to be strong. But you surrendered. You gave me up. You enjoyed what they did to you, and I had to watch._

Beyond him, a smaller animal. _She might have gotten help, if she hadn’t lost every shred of respect we had left,_ it said, but Alam had never spoken so eloquently. _Da was right to let her be punished._

“No,” she moaned, and the night stalkers sidled away from the sound. Gray light seeped back into the world, and it began to wake. She could feel the insects crawling in her wounds, and could not flinch as a raven landed on the crossbar near her head. She wanted to face it, let it freely peck at her, pluck out her eyes so she would not see the bodies on the ground, the blood, the pain…

The bird croaked, hopping onto her shoulder. She turned to it, the action drawing a wheeze from her. It cawed alarm, flapping further away. Her head lolled again, sending a stab through the muscles of her chest and arms. Let her die, at last. Let her die here, let it end…

A gunshot sent the bird airborne, and a wave of them rose from the ground. She tried to open her swollen eyes wider. People were on the road. From a long ways off, she heard talking, their voices hushed, scared. One pointed to the crosses, a hand over her mouth. Adal tried to speak, to plead, but managed only a feeble noise.

They rushed towards the foot of the pole, one man helping another climb up to her. He cut her arms first, making her slump across his shoulders. She gasped, her entire torso burning at the new position, finally able to take a full breath. She began to cough, each spasm its own agony, unable to stop, choking on the water held to her lips. They were jabbering at her, the words too fast and the accents wrong. One of them wrapped a blanket around her, and a man lifted her like a child. She moaned, her wounds hurting anew. They bundled her onto the back of a brahmin, and she fought to stay awake, wondering why they were pulling Sen’s dead body from its cross.

Adal woke as they cleansed her wounds, stuck needles in her. She tried to fight them, to stand under her own power, but they protested and held her down, stranger’s faces hovering over her, leaving her to bite and thrash in panic. Whatever medicines they used left her vague and dull, made them tie her to their pack brahmin lest she hurt herself trying to stand. Sen hung on its other side, in a sling made out of a blanket. She fought to reach for him, finally working her hand free. His arm was cold where she held him, but his eyes might have flickered at the touch.

Something burned in the pit of her gut, impotent rage at her weakness, fury, blind fury that they kept her feet from the road. She clutched Sen tighter, tried to pass that light on to him.

Unable to walk, unable to move, she listened. A caravan, she gathered. Traders, going north to Caananite territory. The women tried to get her to talk as they plied her with food and water, asked her name, her tribe. She stared at Sen, who didn’t wake as they probed at him, tried to force water past his lips. She said nothing, for all their coaxing, hands shaking as she tried to feed herself.

She was silent until one of them asked, a creeping horror in her, “What _happened_ back there?”

And she said only, her voice a thing of ashes and teeth, “We _died_.”

The day was spent in a haze of pain and medicines. She woke in the night to a scraping sound, eyes barely taking in the traders with shovels before consciousness slipped away. The sun woke her, and she blinked. The sling beside her was empty.

The second night, they helped her off the brahmin, laid her on a bedroll. She let them, watching the line of animals, for Sen or some sign of him, heart breaking in her chest. When the camp stilled, she limped away holding one of the guard’s rifles and a bag of rations. Even crippled, one of the Walker was stealthier than townie traders like them.

The Legion had taken the Walker south and east, to that river. Adal used the cool of the night to make time, knowing the sun would be punishing in her state. Her limbs were heavy and sore, the bullet wounds like metal spikes in her flesh. The ones on her legs reopened, running to leave blood in the dirt. As the sky lightened, she hunted for somewhere to rest. A hollow under a standing rock served. It was hard and cramped, but the slight chill was welcome as the sun rose. She had known worse.

She slept fitfully, pain rousing her, her dreams racked by thoughts of her tribe and sons. The last time she woke, she was trembling with cold, sweat on her skin. She stepped out into the fading sun, but the warmth couldn’t touch her. Some of her wounds felt hot, the skin red and swollen. All that meant was less time than she thought, and needed to travel faster.

The chills got worse as she walked, her feet wandering. The Walker stood at the side of the road, in the shadows of the short, scrubby trees. She laughed, a drunken sound, as they followed. They watched, measuring her. She sang as she walked, trying to keep her steps even, reciting jodies that had been breathed through generations for strength. The ghosts joined her with voices that whispered through the grass or howled around stones, all of her tribe—save Sen, Sen who was buried in the dirt, Sen who had given her his faith and his life. She felt she drifted on the sound, feet barely touching the earth. They sang of broc and xander on the road, and she tried to mend her wounds. They wept still, but she would hold.

Ravens were calling as the second dawn came. Adal thought they must be following her, as she Walked to her death, but they were well ahead. She floated down the trail, her pain an afterthought to delirium, and sang the walking-song of ravens and crows, voice cracked and broken.

The flock broke into the air as she stumbled into them, landing at the roadside. “Walker!” she shouted, voice as harsh as the birds’. “Rise! Walk with me to vengeance, to the Legion…”

The bodies had been piled in a ditch. She went to them, the smell of death filling her nose. They were bloated from the sun already, but she could see faces not yet stripped, bits of gear as distinctive as voices. Adal fell to her knees, picking something shining from the dust. A knife, the handle made of a hooked antler. She held it to her chest as she crawled towards the pile, trying to roll the bodies as gently as possible. Old Rin. Lani, who was simple. Dane, his arm broken. Each had been shot in the head, burns around the wounds, or their throats cut. The old, the infirm, the Legion had murdered them rather than march them further.

Flies swarmed the bodies, and Adal held her breath as she dragged them aside. Her boys. If her boys were there… She lay Gabrel aside, taking the time to close her eyes and arrange her hands, and turned back to the ditch. Beneath her body was a hand. A child’s, small and pale, body hidden under the corpses.

She felt herself start to shake. Too big for Alam. Ches. She reached out for it, the hand clean and unmarred, as though she could pull him free and hug him tight, hold him at her side as she searched for the rest of them. Brave Ches, her shadow, who would fight back, would have fought the Legion, like his mother, fool, _fool_.

She was on her feet, screaming, tearing her hair and stamping at the earth. She had killed him, as sure as if she had bled him dry.

Adal turned her face up to the ravens, airborne and panicking at her grief. “Ravens! You Walk the dead to the next life, steal away their flesh,” she said, reeling drunkenly as she stood, laughing. “Come! Follow me! I will make you a feast!”

The road was broken, crooked, rising up to catch at her feet as she walked. Adal cursed it as she went, between pleas to the angry Walker to leave her be, as she went to avenge them. The Legion’s trail was direct, more bodies along it as they culled the weak. Some she knew. Others were strangers. Their hair and clothes and tattoos marked them as tribal, some foreign, others allies or rivals. She paused over each of them, or stared up as they rotted upon crosses, as much kin in that moment as the Walker.

She Walked by chance and instinct, body shaking with chills and rolling with sweat. Time meant nothing, blackness taking her when it wished, regardless of day or night. Her wounds throbbed and smelled fetid, red streaks cutting across her skin, breaking open as she walked to bleed and weep. Her feet found a broad road, wide enough that even her wandering, erratic footsteps stayed upon it. It would lead to the Legion. She would start at the edge of their camp, picking off their sentinels, letting her slip in quietly.

She paused, confused, an unknown time on. The bodies were gone. She blinked, tried to focus, but there was no sign of the forced march in the dust. Her balance failed, and she staggered on. Let that be direction enough.

The ghosts of the Walker were with her, sang with her, tried to keep her footfalls steady. She tried to raise her voice with them, managing only a labored moan. They encouraged her as she moved, threatened her when she faltered. Stillness, rest, collapsing dead was no option.

She could see the camp of Legion men, in her mind’s eye. They would have captured many, broken them, bound them with collars like the ones they had freed. She would cut them loose, give them hope. Steal the weapons from the Legion’s own hands, and rise up.

The sky was full of strange lights, and she felt pebbles digging into her knees.

They would fight, their pain and fear become wrath. They would fight, take back what was theirs from the Legion, wipe them out in revenge. Find the men who had used her, their deaths for her alone, and her knife…

The world tilted and spun. She tasted dust as she breathed.

Find Ches and Alam, hold them tight and weep with joy. But no, not Ches. She tried to push herself up, hands scraping in the dirt, arms failing. Ches was dead on the road. Alam. If he still lived…

Adal could feel the hard ground under her, and could feel herself walking, moving on still. Panic took her, and she thrashed. Was her soul leaving her behind? She clawed at the ground, panting, trying to follow. Her son. Her kin. Her soul might Walk on, but the Legion still had to _pay._

She was blind, the pain putting lights before her eyes, the cold of her body and heat of the sun making her shudder and shake.

Find him.

Find…

_Movement._

_A smell of people and brahmin, the feeling of hands lifting her. She couldn’t fight, her body not her own._

_Dark._


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for referenced noncon, and drug use in this chapter

Softness. Soft and cool, and comfortably dim. Adal opened her eyes, moving, her pain reduced to dull aches. There was a ceiling above, and she sat up, head spinning. Had they taken her? Found one last Walker for their march?

She clawed at the blankets on her, falling from the bed to the floor. She pried at the bandages stuck to her skin, ignoring the pain as they tore away. She grabbed at the stranger’s clothes she wore, a long, loose shirt, her sturdy hides gone. There were other beds, all empty, and she forced herself to her feet, slamming into the door at the end of the long room. It refused to move, and she spun, panicking, spotting a window behind her. She couldn’t run, legs stiff and sore, but threw it open and tumbled out.

Buildings outside, and daylight—a town. People were walking in the street, and one started, pointing at her. There was a voice from the room with the beds, rising from curiosity to alarm. Fear gave her strength, lurching away from them. _Run._ She had to run, get away to safety _they had wanted to keep her_ once they used her, fuck her as she screamed and fought but was weak, too weak, the Bull men with the red flag, red _blood on the road, bodies hacked apart_ —

A man stepped into her path as she ran, hands held up, saying something calm, low. She wheeled and charged for a gap between the buildings, more people in her way. They scattered, and she came up short. A wall. There was a wall around the town, and she followed along it, legs starting to tremble. They gave out under her, and she crawled instead. _Up_ or they would drag her there, choking on the neck of her own hood.

She fell in the grass and weeds along the wall. Maybe she would die, after all. It was cool where she lay, in the shadow of the wall, among the green things. She would die there, and her shame with it.

And Alam…?

She curled up on herself, waiting. This time, darkness didn’t come. Instead, footsteps crunched up on the path, turning soft on the grass. She wiped at her face with the ridiculous shirt, looking at the man crouched out of reach. “Hello,” he said slowly, clearly. She stared at him, dead. “We thought you wouldn’t wake up for a while. You should go back to bed.”

Adal forced herself to speak, tongue thick and slow. “Don’t speak townie.”

He chuckled. “But I understand you, so you can probably hear me just fine.” He tipped his head, trying to catch her eye. “What’s your name?”

“Just kill me, Legion man.”

“Legion…” Something dark passed over his face. “Miss, you’re in New Canaan. I swear on God’s name you’re safe here, even from them.” He held out a hand. “My name is Isaac. Please, let me help you up.”

“Kill me.”

“No! Miss—” He drew back. “You’re sick, please…”

“Then let me die!” she screamed, voice breaking.

“I…” He beside her, rubbing his face. “What… what happened to you, miss?”

 _They were marching away, across the blood and bodies._ “They took my boys.”

“Where? Who?” The voice was from somewhere far off, unfamiliar, maybe one of the Legion…

“Took them.” She ground her teeth until they creaked, grinding her fingers into her eyes. “Took them, took—”

She flinched away from the hand on her arm, patting awkwardly at her as she cried. He was reciting something, measured tones that made her think of a walking jody, but too varied, too low. When her throat grew too raw, and she was empty, she managed to listen. “…in his mercy may he give us a safe lodging, and holy rest and peace at the last.” Rest. Peace. Let her die…

“Are you… done?” he asked, back to awkward, losing that strange formal tone.

She didn’t respond, cried hollow. Her body was heavy and light at the same time, a doll with no hands to move it. She couldn’t fight as he helped her stand, slowly, taking her weight on an arm as he walked her back to the bed.

They tolerated her, gave her pitying looks as they brought her food and prayed beside her sickbed. She sat and listened and said nothing, and ate because food was never to be wasted. She ignored them watching her as she walked the walls of the town, finding her strength again. They gave her clothes, made her go shod. Their women were quiet, humble, and their weakness grated on her. Their men were wary, found her forward, threatening. She stopped speaking to either, even Isaac, who shadowed her, tried to read of consolation from his books and lecture her when she troubled the other townies.

The children ran scared of her, and she suspected their elders had told them to stay away. Once, on her walk, she spotted them playing, boys and girls alike. She had to stop, to rest against a building, overcome. She could only see her boys, her sons, dead, gone…

Isaac found her there. He tried to take her hand, hold her as she cried. She attacked him, bloodying his face, laughing as she felt the bones of his arm break, _the Red men would lose this time…_

They kept her locked in a room until they drew a grudging apology, a promise to behave. They grew tense when she demanded a gun, to be let outside, to hunt. She grew angry when they said no. They said her spirit would be saved if she submitted to their god, bowed to their ways.

“And what does your book say of my dead?” she rasped, voice unused, unfamiliar.

Sitting with her in her room, in a chair out of her reach and his arm in a sling, Isaac seemed to brighten. He didn’t watch her, talking of their rites, of their god, spoke of _salvation_ and _solace_ didn’t see her fists and teeth clenched until she tore the book from his hands, ripping pages from it.

They grew harsher, confining her, but she would not be held. Adal snuck out through the window, taught herself to pick the lock on her door. She wandered the silent town at night, tried to find ways over the walls. Found the traders from the west, _New California_ , who let her into their borrowed lodgings, unaware of her place there, or lack of one. They were foreign, strange, and she lost herself in it, in the liquor they snuck past the townies.

The Canaanites’ patience finally broke when they found her with them one night, drunk and naked and wrapped around one of their men. She spat on them, spat on the doors to their town from the back of the trader’s cart.

She was Walker. No walls would hold her. No townies would give her orders.

She looked down at her Caananite’s clothes, her booted feet, felt the sun on her unhooded head. Sitting in a cart instead of using her legs. Walker. She was…

Adal paid her keep to the caravan’s elder by hunting, using spears and hatchet, no longer worthy of knife and gun. To the one who traded her chems behind their backs, she paid in favors. She was dead to it as he used her, made herself be, was strong enough not to let it affect her. She walked with them until they reached the civilized lands to the west, ones the Walker had shunned for the greed of its owners. The caravaners were too slow and slovenly to keep dragging her feet alongside them, and she was tired of the ugly looks they gave her and the man who claimed her. 

Their elder gave her caps to take packages instead, walking alone through this new world. _Courier_ , people starting calling her. She left the caravan behind entire, learning the roads through New California, and making her own when they didn’t serve. She took to it, took strange jobs and packages and met strange people, never staying, never settling. There was peace in the solitude, alone with her thoughts and whatever chems she could buy to numb them. Alone on the roads, she was safe.

Alone on the roads, no one heard Adal weep, imagining the Walker keeping time.


	11. Epilogue

Adal closed her hand on the knife. The antler of the handle was smoother than it had been, maybe, but it fit her grip perfectly, the blade still well-kept and keen. Her mouth twisted. The balance on it was off, as it had always been.

_”If the stories of you are true, this was...taken, a very long time ago."_

She took a breath, fighting down the bitter taste in her mouth. Four or five of them, in a Freeside alley, in _her_ city…

_”Lanius had us spend our best men on the Dam. We are near leaderless. If you would accept our fealty, madam..."_

Dinner spat as it roasted over the fire—only fat on a night stalker was on the tail, but it made up for it in richness. The smell of smoke nibbled at the edges of her thoughts, trying to find a crack, a way in, to force it wider until the dam burst in her head and she was on her knees sobbing—

She reached over and gave the spit a half-turn. A fire she’d laid, small, controlled, a tool. The only thing worth crying over was if she overcooked her meal.

Lake Mead caught the evening sun, glittering orange. Her back creaked as she straightened, still stiff from the day’s work, pulling the hide off the paddle she’d half-buried in the dirt. The night stalker hide was supple in her hands, stretching slightly as she tied it into a wooden frame, holding it tight and stable. She worked her fingers over it, feeling for any stiff sections, and nodded to herself, satisfied.

Going back to her seat—and pausing to arch her back, digging a thumb into her spine until it popped—she propped the frame up before her. Holding the knife with the tip between her fingers, she wavered. Adal ran her hand over the hide, the fine pattern of stripes and diamonds, the smooth, hard pebbling left behind with fur and scale scraped away. A perfect hide, a proud one, that would have spoken to the skill and strength of the Walker who wore it, and befitting the Mojave.

Or…

Taking her knife by the handle, she cut the ties holding the skin to the frame, rolling it up tight.

The tail went on the fire first, the fat flaring up to help the hide catch. She dug out a can cooking in the embers, managed to get the potato inside dumped out without burning herself. She dragged her rickety folding chair upwind, away from the smell, kept feeding the fire until well after the sun went down.

When there were only a few flakes of leather left, she opened a Nuka on the edge of her boot, dousing the flames with it. Clouds of steam and smoke lifted away, the heat of it fading. Elbows on her knees, head down, someone nearby might have seen her lips moving, heard a faint murmur as her voice rose and fell, like someone remembering a half-forgotten song. Her breath caught, some last verse coming slower, softer around it.

She straightened. The wind blew through the old shack, around the rocks at the shore, made a hum like a distant choir. Raising her head, she didn’t quite smile as she spread her hands.

“Walk well.”


End file.
